


i forget where we were

by eclenic



Category: Timeless (TV 2016)
Genre: Angst, Drama, Especially Flynn, F/M, Lucy is Rittenhouse, Pining, Romance, a lot of it, everybody has a lot of feelings, post-s2, timeline change
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-07-23
Updated: 2019-01-22
Packaged: 2019-06-14 18:30:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 28,447
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15394836
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eclenic/pseuds/eclenic
Summary: It is easier than you think to change the course of a life, to stop someone becoming the person they were supposed to be.Lucy Preston's parents first tell her about Rittenhouse when she is seven years old.





	1. but it's in your nature

**Author's Note:**

> I'm sure that RittenLucy has been done plenty before, but it just took hold of me and demanded my attention, so here it is. I apparently will never miss a chance to make the fictional people I love terribly unhappy.
> 
> Lucy Preston does not deserve any of this shit and I can only apologise to her for it. That's all.
> 
> Title and chapter title are both from Ben Howard, _I Forget Where We Were_ and _All is Now Harmed_ , respectively.

_Lucy Preston is seven years old when she first hears the name Rittenhouse._

_She is sitting in a doctor’s office, her mother outside with a man who had smiled when he saw her, and she knows she’s not supposed to listen to other people talking but they’re loud._

_“We have to tell her.” That’s her mother, using that voice Lucy hears sometimes when she hasn’t finished her homework or taken out the trash on time._

_“She’s too young, Carol. You were the one who wanted to wait.”_

_“That was before. You know what the message said. We do it now.”_

_They come back in, and the man smiles at her again before he sits down._

_(Lucy thinks she prefers her old doctor.)_

_“Hi, Lucy,” he says. “My name’s Ben.”_

_“I’m not sick,” she says, and he laughs._

_“I know. I’m an old friend of your mom’s. She just wanted the three of us to have a little talk.”_

_He leans forward and she doesn’t like it one bit._

_“Tell me, Lucy, have you ever heard of a man named David Rittenhouse?”_

_It’s as simple as that._

————

“Well, maybe if you hadn’t shot him, Flynn,” Wyatt says as he steps from the Lifeboat.

“I’m with Flynn here.” That’s Jiya. “He deserved to be shot.”

“Thank you.”

“Don’t push it.”

“Team!” Agent Christopher seems...sterner, than usual, a different set to the line of her shoulders. “What happened?”

“Well, John Marshall still became Chief Justice, so mission accomplished.” Flynn shrugs. “Other than that, not much.”

“Flynn is missing out the part where he _shot Thomas Jefferson_ ,” Wyatt says, and the withering look that Flynn shoots him is worth it.

“What?”

“One, he was Rittenhouse,” Flynn says, struggling free of his tailcoat. “Two, I didn’t even kill him, and three - you’re welcome, Wyatt, his bodyguard was aiming at you.”

“I’m sure.” Denise's raised eyebrow says everything, but she doesn't push it further.

“We got it done, didn’t we?” Flynn rolls his shoulders, looking around the room. “Where’s Lucy?”

Denise frowns, and the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end. He can feel the hit coming, but all he can do is wait for it.

“Who’s Lucy?”

————

_When she is nine, the man she knows as Ben is re-introduced to her as her father. She has seen him a few times now, over the past couple of years, always accompanied by more talk of David Rittenhouse and his place in American history, how America is a country built on ideas and he had some of the best._

_It all sounds like a lot of nothing to her, young as she is, like the stories they tell her at bedtime. Clockmakers and generals might as well be kings and princesses. She tells her mother this, and she purses her lips and tells her not to say that to her father._

_Carol comes back home two days later with a book from the university library, and presses it into her hands. It's a little dense for a child, but Lucy is a smart kid and she figures she'll do fine._

_"See, Lucy," Carol tells her. "It's all true."_

————

"Lucy...Preston?" Denise repeats back, when he says her name, and Flynn hates it, hates the lack of recognition in her voice, the blankness in her eyes. "We've never had anyone else on the team. Just us."

He wants it to be a joke. Wants Lucy to jump out from behind some pillar and laugh and tell them _you should see your faces_. But the look on Denise's face kills even that faint hope.

They've come home to timeline changes before, of course - big ones, even. (Jessica Logan certainly qualifies.) But those feel like footnotes compared to this. This is seismic, a yawning chasm split through their foundation, and he's honestly not sure how they're all standing here if she's not. Just about the only comforting thing is Wyatt and Jiya, out of the corner of his eye - rooted in place like him, afraid to move for fear the ground will no longer take their weight.

"But it's Lucy," Wyatt manages to say, like it's the simplest thing in the world.

It should be.

A thought flashes through his head. He's not sure how it would have done it, but as far as he knows, the only thing different between this timeline and the last is the bullet he put in Thomas Jefferson's arm. Inconsequential, really, the cleanest of clean shots. Not even a challenge for nineteenth-century medicine to put right.

Unless.

————

_At twelve, her mother tells her she’s going to a new school - an old, leafy private school with rolling lawns and a uniform with the phrase Tempus fugit embroidered on the breast pocket under a picture of a clock. Her classmates are all the children of her father’s friends, and when she stands in front of the board with the names of former students, the same names keep appearing. Keynes. Cahill. Preston._

_She hears things, sometimes - teachers, mostly, hears phrases like 'last descendant' and 'two good families' and once, she thinks, 'royalty'._

————

The new safehouse is actually a house, improbably, and Flynn leans back in one of the kitchen chairs while he hears about a life that sounds a lot like the one he lived, minus the absence of one Lucy Preston.

"That doesn't make sense," he says, for what must be the hundredth time. "How would I know to steal the Mothership if Lucy didn't tell me about it?"

"You never told us," Denise replies. She's still looking at them the way they're looking at her, like this is some very weird joke, but there's precedent for this. She believes them, and if this is something Rittenhouse wants then it's imperative they fix it as soon as they can. "We always assumed it was Anthony Bruhl."

Flynn shakes his head. He had been the one to seek out Anthony. But then again, maybe he hadn't, not here. The version of himself who could answer his questions conveniently no longer existed.

He looks around the room, just barely listening as Wyatt and Jiya ask about Jessica and Rufus (no changes there either), and he wonders if they feel it too. The lack of her is palpable, filling all the cracks and crevices, pressing in on his chest when he breathes.

He found the sweater she’d stolen from him, the one she’d been wearing when they left, neatly folded over the chair in his room. When they sat down at the table, her chair stayed empty. Wyatt had looked at him like it meant something,

————

_Noah is in her English class, and it seems like the entire world thinks they're a perfect fit. She doesn’t love him, even back then, but he’s what her mother refers to as a ‘good match’ so she keeps it going far longer than she should._

_He's good, in a way most people she meets aren't, and if the rumours that go around school are at all true, the things they will eventually make him do will eat him alive. She wants to protect him, even as her heart stubbornly refuses to fall in love with him like everyone around her wants it to._

_He wants to be a doctor, too, and when she takes him to meet her father, Benjamin smiles and offers to write Noah a recommendation letter for any school he wants to go to._

_“Anything for Lucy’s friends,” he says. “Besides, you’re one of our own.”_

_She tells him to go, get as far away as he can. Go learn to be a doctor in Europe somewhere, or Australia, anywhere other than here where they can ruin him._

_"I don't want to leave you," he says, in a way she supposes he thinks is romantic, and applies to Stanford instead._

————

Flynn finds Wyatt sitting in front of one of the computers, his fingers hovering over the keyboard, and immediately knows they’re here for the same thing.

“Do it,” Flynn says, and he wishes he sounded more sure of himself, but there are only a few reasons she wouldn't be with them now. None are particularly appealing.

“I....” Wyatt trails off. Her name is already there, he got that far. “I’ve been sitting here for an hour. I don’t know if I can.”

This isn't surprising. Wyatt prefers uncertainty, will curl around the possibility of a good outcome and protect it as long as he can. Certainty has not, historically, worked out well for him.

There's a half-second of hesitation in Flynn, but he's always been more one for a painful truth over a hopeful lie. He reaches over and hits enter for him.

Lucy’s picture appears on the screen in front of them and Wyatt gasps in relief. Flynn’s mouth sets into a thin line. It takes him a second to catch up, but Wyatt looks back at the screen and frowns.

“Doctor Lucy Preston-Cahill, American History, Stanford University,” he reads, brow furrowing more every second. “ _Cahill?_ ”

 _That’ll do it_ , Flynn thinks.

————

_When she turns eighteen, things start to change. Although the faint undercurrent of Rittenhouse has always been there, almost as long as she can remember now, becoming an adult turns those whispers into shouts. Other than the talks her father used to give her, as a child, she had rarely heard the name 'Rittenhouse' ever spoken aloud. It was always more coy than that; a wink and a nudge whenever somebody talked about 'them' or 'the plan'. Even now, if she says it, her mother winces._

_But her father starts inviting her to meetings with him; introducing her to a surprising variety of quietly powerful people, all of whom seem somehow in awe of her. It's only when her mother talks to her about their history that she understands it. That, and a few other things._

_She's not sure if she should be surprised about being a direct descendant. It explains a lot._

_“This is about protecting people, Lucy,” Carol tells her. “Protecting America. And you’re a big part of that.”_

_She knows. It’s the Family Business. People have destinies, they tell her, and this is hers._

————

Flynn is already waiting by the car when Wyatt gets there. It’s early, the sun just barely risen, but it’s not like either of them has slept anyway. Denise had banned them from going, but Jiya had pressed the keys into his hand after she left and told him _bring Lucy home, I'm not losing anyone else_.

“I’m surprised you waited.”

Flynn shrugs. “You had five more minutes.”

Flynn drives, and they don’t talk. Wyatt tries, once or twice, but neither of them has the answers the other wants and he watches as Flynn punctuates his one-word answers by tightening his grip on the steering wheel.

"I've thought about it, y'know," Wyatt says, on his final try. "If it's...If she's..."

Neither of them has said it out loud yet, and Wyatt isn't about to be the first. Still, even unsaid, the words hang heavy in the air. If she's one of them.

"It must have been them. Maybe they did something in 1801, or maybe they went somewhere we don't know about. But I don't think it was us."

It sounds an awful lot like what he's saying is _it's not your fault_ and Flynn hates him for it.

————

_She’s a junior in college, studying history just like her mother always told her she was supposed to. She loves it, secretly, and in a way she wishes she didn't._

_She broke up with Noah last year, crushed the kid like a bug, and it was the freest she'd ever felt. But lately, her parents’ expectations have tightened back around her like a vice, holding her in a shape she doesn’t fit._

_("Life isn't about being free, Lucy," she hears in her mother's voice, so clearly she actually looks around for her.)_

_There’s a guy (of course there is; occasionally she allows herself the luxury of cliché) and he’s in a band (again, cliché) and for once she is doing something only because she wants to._

_She’s driving to her mother’s house to tell her she’s dropping out of college, and she’s so busy trying to figure out what her comeback to Carol’s crushing disappointment will be that she doesn’t notice the oil on the road until she’s already spinning. The car careens down the shoulder and comes to rest against the guardrail, the water below pitch black._

_The police officers drive her to the station, and she doesn’t call her mother._

_“Daddy?” She says down the phone. “No, it was just an accident, I’m fine. Could you come get me?"_

_People have destinies, she hears in her head, as her father drives her home and doesn't ask. For the first time, she starts to wonder if it might actually be true._

————

"Doctor Preston-Cahill?"

(The name - he can't think of it as belonging to her at all - trips over his tongue, feels awkward just being in his mouth.)

"Can I help you?"

How they made it into the building without somebody calling security, Wyatt will never know. Flynn looks exactly like you’d expect him to, all wild-eyed and fierce, and Wyatt had to flash his military ID far earlier than he would have liked. The receptionist had eyed him with suspicion before pointing them towards Lucy's office, and he still half-thinks they might be tackled at any second.

But it doesn't matter. Because she's there, she's _real_ , and it might only have been a few days since he last saw her but the sight of her hits him like a tidal wave.

It is here, at this point, that he realises he has no idea what to say to her.

"I, uh...I'm Wyatt Logan," he says, because it's at least true. "That's Flynn."

Flynn is wearing the same winded expression Wyatt was a moment ago; Lucy smiles politely.

"What can I do for you?"

Wyatt is still searching for something plausible to say when Flynn steps forward, shoots him a look that says _just go with me here_ , and speaks.

"We hoped you had a minute to answer a few questions, Doctor."

"And you are?"

"Delta Force," Wyatt supplies, holding up his ID again. "He's a... consultant. We're working with Homeland Security."

It's all mostly true, and Lucy seems satisfied enough. "Ask away."

Flynn pauses, and for a moment Wyatt wonders if that's as far into a plan as he got.

"Do you know Connor Mason?"

Lucy laughs. "Everyone knows who Connor Mason is. There's still a hole in Palo Alto where his company used to be."

"Of course. But you've never met him?"

"Well, we don't really run in the same circles. What was this about, again?"

"We're looking into the events surrounding the explosion," Flynn says, "and we found some irregularities. Nothing serious, we think. But we're particularly interested in some donations Mr. Mason may have made to the hospital where your father works. UCSF, correct?"

Wyatt watches the frown flash over Lucy's face, the way she tries to hide it, and right then, he knows. Judging by the way the muscles in Flynn's jaw tighten, he does too.

"You'd have to ask my father about that," she says, carefully. "But he's just a surgeon."

That's a lie and they all know it. Still, Flynn manages a strained smile.

"Oh, I'm sure. We have to follow every lead, just in case, that's all."

Lucy stands up, and even though it's Lucy, the way she does it makes the soldier in Wyatt want to reach for his gun. For a second, she is entirely unfamiliar to him.

"That was everything?" She says, more of a statement than a question. "I'm late for my little brother's soccer game."

"Your brother?" Wyatt asks, and it's out before he can stop it.

"He's fifteen," Lucy says defensively. "He doesn't have anything to do with any of this."

"Of course, Doctor Preston-Cahill." Flynn stumbles over the name the same way Wyatt did. "We'll come back if we need anything else."

Lucy looks like she's not exactly relishing the prospect of that happening, but gives them a curt nod, and leaves them there.

Flynn visibly sags as soon as she's not looking, so much so that Wyatt briefly thinks he's going to have to hold him up to get him back to the car. He abruptly straightens, though, and starts striding away.

"Come on," he says, a sharp edge to his voice that Wyatt can practically feel. "We have to follow her."

————

_The years roll on, and it's always just when she thinks that maybe everything can be normal, that Rittenhouse won't take up her entire life someday, that it comes back._

_She wants to take any job other than Stanford, forge a path that isn't already laid out at her feet. It isn't about Rittenhouse at all, she thinks, except everything is. That's clear enough when she talks to her mother about it, and she's barely finished speaking before words like 'legacy' and 'destiny' and 'family' are spilling out of Carol's mouth. In the end, though, Carol sighs and smiles._

_"I know this isn't always easy for you, Lucy," she says. "But you always come home in the end."_

_She takes the job at Stanford the next day._


	2. don't burn this world down

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title from _Cali_ by Matthew and the Atlas.

Lucy knows what she’s supposed to do. Has done it once before, in fact, the last time somebody asked too many questions. She knows if she calls her father, it will be Dealt With.

She doesn’t do that, though. She’s driving down the freeway, three cars in front of two people who clearly think she doesn’t know how to tell when she’s being followed, and for whatever reason, she can't bring herself to fear them.

(She hadn't wanted to do it, the last time, but she had been scared then. These two? Wyatt, with sadness in the creases of his eyes; and Flynn, who looked at her like he'd seen a ghost? Not so much.)

She could keep driving, go exactly where she told them she was - another thing she's supposed to do when this happens. Be predictable. Be truthful. Don't let anyone suspect.

But though they hadn't said _Rittenhouse_ , they'd all known exactly what they were talking about. And she's not about to lead them directly to her father. To her brother. Not out in the open where they can't protect themselves.

So, she doesn't do that, either. She knows better than that. She pulls off the freeway and puts her training to use.

(She remembers being nineteen, in a deserted parking lot in the middle of the night, asking her father when, exactly, she was ever going to need to know how to lose a tail. He had said something about it being better to know and not need, than to need and not know.)

————

“But Lucy doesn’t have a brother,” Wyatt says. “Hey, watch, she’s taking this exit.”

"Evidently," Flynn replies, as he jerks the wheel and they hit the off-ramp at the last possible moment, "things change."

It will be a miracle if they get to the end of this without one of them punching the other.

"I'm not an idiot, Flynn, I know that."

"And yet..."

Miracle.

"Would you stop being a dick and drive? We're losing her."

Flynn is about to reply that he's quite sure he can manage both, but Wyatt is right. Lucy's car is suddenly much further away than it was a minute ago. She takes a sharp turn off into a side street, then a few more, and all of a sudden they're back on the street they started on, and she is nowhere.

  
"What the hell?" Wyatt spins around in his seat, checking every possible angle and side-street, but doesn't even see a car that looks like Lucy's. "What happened?"

"We lost her."

"I can see that, Flynn. I thought you said you knew how to do this."

"I do." Wyatt looks over, and he could swear that Flynn looks proud. "Apparently, so does she."

————

Flynn turns the car around and starts the long drive back to the safehouse. They still don't talk, except for this:

"What're we gonna do?"

"I have no idea."

Wyatt feels frozen, paralysed, _stuck_. They could try jumping, pick a year and a place and try to find the moment that everything changed. That's like trying to find a needle in a pile of needles, though, with the added bonus of maybe making things even worse. But that leaves doing nothing, leaving Lucy behind, and neither of them are prepared to do that, either. He leans back in his seat and groans, scrubbing a hand over his face, and then his phone rings. It's been going off like clockwork, every fifteen minutes. Has done so since about an hour after they left this morning, which is presumably when Denise realised they were gone.

He picks it up to answer it this time, to start the apologies good and early, but it's not a call. It's a text from Jiya.

_The Mothership jumped._

Well, fuck.

————

Lucy's little brother, Ethan, is probably her favourite person in the world. He's smart, funny, far more preoccupied with his place in the starting line-up than in his family's legacy, and she loves him enough that she's even willing to sit through soccer games for him.

Lucy can tell you the history of the game from start to finish. Knows it was first played in China about five thousand years ago, but the rules of the game today date from Victorian England. Ethan's last birthday present was a framed print of the original rules of the game. _That's_ interesting. But the actual game? All that running around and occasionally somebody might score, or maybe not? Kind of dull.

Today, though, Ethan's team win 4-3, and he scores the winning goal, right at the end of the game when time has all but run out. She leaps from her seat and cheers as loud as the rest of them.

By the time he makes it back to them after the game, the kid is practically floating. He runs to them, the game ball tucked under his arm, and his smile might be the best thing she’s ever seen.

"Dad! Lucy! Did you see?"

"We sure did. I'm so proud of you!"

"Coach says if I keep playing like that, I'll start in the finals for sure!"

"That's awesome, buddy."

Her father's phone rings, and his smile falls off his face when he sees whatever the name on the screen is. That's...not good, and Lucy briefly thinks of her earlier visitors.

"Could you drive him to your mother's? I'll meet you there, this could be a while."

"Sure, Dad, of course." Ben nods and strides off, the phone already answered, his voice low.

"Was that..." Ethan asks, a few watts of his joy gone. He's getting better, much better than she was at his age, at figuring out when something is going to be okay and when it's bad, and this is definitely the latter. He _knows_ , of course - they told him when he was nine. Lucy had even helped give him the talk, though she'd had no idea what to tell him.

(Ethan's mother died when he was five, and it broke her father so thoroughly that the only thing she could do was step in and hold them both together.)

"Probably. It'll be fine, though. Dad'll know what to do."

She starts to walk off towards her car, waits for him to fall in lock-step beside her. He always does, even now when he's quieter than he deserves to be.

"So," she says, mock-conspiratorial, "I don't know about you, but I'm pretty sure their second goal was offside. Should have been a free kick."

Ethan laughs, and that's better. "Do you have any idea what that meant?"

"Not really, no. Heard one of your friends' dads say it. Was I close?"

"I'd give you an A for effort, but..."

"Hey!" She nudges him with her elbow and he grins again, and by the time they get to the car he's back chattering about finals and scouts and hey, maybe dad would let him play for couple years at college, what does she think?

She promises to talk to him, can already tell how that conversation is going to go, and by the time they pull out of the parking lot, he’s already wondering aloud what her mom is going to make for their weekly dinner.

“Bad news, kid. It’s my turn to cook.”

“Oh, god. Can we order pizza?”

————

Flynn and Wyatt spend the entirety of the six-hour drive back to the safe house in tight silence, waiting for the world to tilt on its axis again. Not an hour later, Jiya had texted again. _She jumped again_. Then, a little after that: _It's back_.

Fighting Rittenhouse with Emma at the helm was like fighting a hydra, the hits never stopping, coming from all angles at once. She struck hard and fast and frequently, never pausing to let them draw breath or dress their wounds or, crucially, plan more than an hour or two ahead.

And they, couple of idiots that they were, had left. Were coming back empty-handed. Had stormed into Stanford without a plan and probably tipped off Rittenhouse along the way. That if they had waited a day, just _one_ , maybe they all could have come up with a plan that wasn't completely terrible. Together. And now, they have no idea what Emma did in 1818, or 1958, and no idea what other surprises are waiting for them.

That's exactly the speech Denise gives them, and they sit there and nod and take it because she's not wrong.

(Both of them would do it again in a heartbeat.)

————

Family dinner was something they had instituted years ago, in the strange vacuum created by Ethan's mother's death. Things had been bad, back then, and the dinners had come out of a desire to make sure her father was occasionally eating something.

Time had moved forward, people had healed, but the habit never broke. Every Wednesday night, the four of them would sit down and have dinner at her mother's house. It was usually the best night of the week.

Her father arrives late, huffing and thundering, and it takes a good few minutes and a lot of quiet whispering with Carol before he comes out of it. Lucy thinks she hears _it was them_ , and thinks again of what happened earlier, but still doesn't say a word.

But, as Ethan suggests, they order pizza, and it's totally because he won his game and therefore gets to pick, and definitely not because Lucy nearly burned down the kitchen last time it was her turn.

"It wasn't _that_ bad," Lucy protests, and all three of them give her knowing looks over their slices.

After dinner, she ends up in the kitchen with her mother, watching as Ethan and her father talking and laughing about nothing in particular.

"They look happy," Carol says. Her father looks over and smiles at them, and the smile Carol gives back is one of the most open she's ever seen.

Lucy is used to this. She's been watching her parents flit around each other on and off for years, always walking up to the line and never quite crossing it. As she expects, Carol stays in it for a second more, then abruptly changes the subject.

"You know, I ran into Noah the other day," she says, and the sheer force of Lucy's eye roll could probably move mountains.

"Mom..."

"He's still in love with you, you know."

"He didn't say that."

"He's been in love with you since he was seventeen, Lucy, he didn't have to. And you were always so good together."

"We weren't." Noah is...not one of her finer moments. They've collided here and there since she first broke his heart, sometimes just for a little while, sometimes longer. The last time, two years ago, it had been devastating, ending with her returning his engagement ring and swearing she would never do him any more damage ever again.

"He wanted to marry me, and I wanted..." she trails off.

"What?"

" _More_. More than just to be somebody's wife, I guess."

Carol can hardly argue with that.

"Let me talk to your father," she says, instead. "I think it's time we brought you in on something we've been working on."

————

Later, after Denise leaves to finally go see her family for a few days, they congregate around the kitchen table once more. Even Connor, usually in self-imposed exile trying to figure out the calculations the Future Lifeboat left behind, joins them for a while.

(And there was another one. Wyatt had apparently come alone on that trip, according to Connor, and that still didn't make any sense.)

It's late enough when they start, and later still when Wyatt thumps his fist on the table, because they still coming up mostly empty. Rufus and Lucy were the best of them, trust them, they are painfully aware. That they are frustrated and helpless and unable to do a damn thing to save either of them right now might just be the biggest failure they've ever had.

"Don't we have something in the Lifeboat? A picture of her sister or something? Flynn, where's the journal?"

"I gave it to Lucy," Flynn says, almost laughing with the ridiculousness of it all, and Wyatt groans.

"So what, we've got nothing?"

"If that," Jiya says, and it's harsh but it's late and it's true. "Why can't we just tell her? It's Lucy, right? She hates Rittenhouse as much as any of us."

"Does she, though? Whatever was changed in the past, this Lucy is clearly different." Connor chimes in. He didn't know her in this timeline, of course, but Flynn still thinks it would be great if he could stop sounding so damn fascinated by it all.

"He's right," Flynn says, though, because he is. "We'd be telling her to come back to a world where her mother's dead, her father's in prison, and her sister's still gone. Maybe she'd hear it, or maybe she'd turn around and _let_ them kill us."

"We should have taken her to 1801," Wyatt says for about the tenth time. "It would've been fine."

"I know."

Lucy had already been to 1801, when she had been with her mother and Emma. It was a few weeks after their trip, but she had decided it was too close to risk if something went wrong and stayed behind. She kept remembering things they might need to know, shouting them after the closing Lifeboat door. The last image Flynn has is of her standing there in the barn, absolutely swimming in his sweater, yelling something about Aaron Burr he wishes he could remember exactly.

————

It's about two in the morning before they realise that they've long passed the point of being helpful, and silently agree to come back to it tomorrow, and the day after, and as long as it takes to retrieve their missing pieces.

By Flynn's count, based on Emma's previous patterns, he has a few hours before their next round of Chase a Woman Fruitlessly Through Time is due to begin, and he hasn't slept in at least two days.

His bed feels wrong, though, without Lucy there, no matter how he tosses and turns and tries to forget.

It was a habit that had formed almost by accident, something that had started the night a version of herself had turned up, refusing to talk to anyone but Connor or Jiya. Both of them had needed the distraction.

She had appeared at his door, the way she had done before, and for the next few hours they forced themselves to talk about anything they could think of, lest either of them march over to Future Lucy (or Wyatt, for that matter) and shatter their timeline any more than it already was.

Lucy had told him that if she left his room she wouldn’t be able to stop herself from doing it, so he had pointed at his bed and she had taken him up on the offer. And, when he’d tried to settle himself back in his chair, like last time, she had held out her hand to him and told him not to be an idiot.

He had known that if he kissed her then, she would have let him. Didn’t do it for exactly that reason.

Flynn had expected that to be the end of it, but he’d fallen asleep, the first night here, and woken to the mattress shifting as she lay down next to him. Neither of them said a word, but she had pressed herself against him like he was the last solid thing on Earth, and he had slung his arms around her, and that was that.

She would appear after he went to bed, usually left before the others started to stir. She would smile at him over the rim of her coffee mug in the mornings, and if anyone noticed that her bed was never slept in, nobody said a thing. Before the last trip, there had only been one night they’d been apart, on a mission where he and Wyatt had managed to royally screw everything up and get themselves separated. The night they got back she had clung to him so tightly he could barely move.

He had wanted to kiss her then, but still hadn't. No, he'd thought that what she needed from him was different, convinced himself that this was as much of him as she wanted.

There had been once, though, one outstanding moment. He had woken up in the middle of the night to find Lucy still awake in his arms, watching him with an undecipherable look on her face. It had started with her lips on the underside of his jaw, and ended with his hand between her legs, hearing her whisper his name against his chest.

(He was still not completely sure it hadn’t been a dream.)

The sound of the alarm, just before dawn, is a relief.

————

“A _time machine_? You’re kidding, right?”

Her parents shoot concerned looks between each other, but her next question makes them both smile.

“Can I see it?”


	3. this moment feels like an echo

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, this chapter kicked my ass a fair bit, but we got there eventually. Proving that inspiration can come from anywhere, this chapter's title comes from _Dark Side of Your Room_ by All Time Low.
> 
> The next update will likely be in about two weeks as I'm going away, but I'm hoping to have two chapters for you guys when I get back, and I promise, they're big ones. 
> 
> In the meantime - my other fandom love is fanmixing, and I think you guys are ready to hear the mix for this fic. It's [here](http://drlucypreston.tumblr.com/post/176785156811/i-forget-where-we-were-a-garcia-flynnlucy).

  
It's fair to say the team is not, currently, at its most effective. They've had some decent wins - if not allowing Rittenhouse to change _too_ much is a win - but their loss counter is climbing.

It's methodical, Flynn thinks, the way Rittenhouse has absolutely dismantled them.

With remarkably little effort - a bullet here, a quick trip to the past there - they've been completely shattered. Jiya is a decent pilot, and getting better all the time, but she's still some way off Rufus' best. Sometimes they'll land an hour or a mile away from where they were supposed to, and that's enough. Meanwhile, Emma has (smartly, honestly) weaponised Jessica Logan, deploying her any time it seems like Wyatt might actually be coping, and it is devastatingly effective.

And then there's Flynn himself, and Lucy. The less time spent thinking about that, the better.

(There's his wife and daughter, too, but that's a different kind of wound - older, though no less deep, and his alone to carry. Rufus, Jessica, and Lucy? Those are fresh, and ripped open at every opportunity, designed to keep bleeding until they can't fight any more.)

(It seems to be working.)

————

They actually see Emma this time, which is a rarity in itself. She prefers to stay away from the front lines, let her army of sleepers do the dirty work. But here she is, standing in front of them on a street in the 1870s, out in the open. Not a trace of fear in her.

Of course it's a trap.

“Where’s your girl Friday?” She asks it like she doesn’t already know, a smirk curling the corners of her mouth. “Don’t tell me you lost her too.”

Wyatt starts to reach for the holster in his jacket and Emma makes a noise that stops him.

“I wouldn’t.”

Her eyes flick upwards, and he follows. There's at least two of them he can see, faceless Rittenhouse goons with their guns trained squarely on him.

"One move, and your baby never meets its father."

Wyatt swallows, hard, because if he doesn't he's going to lunge at her and get them all killed. His hand drops back to his side.

“This is all you, right? You did this.”

Emma shrugs, just about as smug as he's seen her. “And why would I? Go back and make sure the princess was raised _right_?" The way she says it makes him sure, surer than he's ever been, that this was all her. "Seems like a lot of effort for one person.”

She’s enjoying this, of course she is, and he feels Flynn’s arm twitch next to him, trying to decide if it’s worth going for it anyway. Wyatt is tempted to let him.

They make it back to the Lifeboat later, and he's honestly not sure how, just that it has a lot to do with the fact that Jiya is a far better shot than anybody has given her credit for.

"So," she says, already turning them back towards home, "it was definitely Emma, then? Lucy?"

"Has to have been," he replies. "She might as well have admitted it."

"I'll check the logs again, see if we missed a jump."

Flynn says nothing, and stares at the floor the whole way home.

————

“Wait for it, Lucy,” Carol promises, “she’s just coming in.”

The Mothership appears with a familiar pop, and Ben and Carol’s eyes never leave Lucy even as the wind rushes over them. They've tried not to think about it, over the years, but they knew this moment was always coming, ever since the day they got the message. It was long, and detailed, but there was always one line that stood out.

_Tell her. Raise her right, or you'll lose her. You'll lose everything._

Lucy's smile spreads wide and low like a sunset.

“That’s _incredible_ ,” she says, and they both breathe small, private sighs of relief. “What’s next?”

"Why don't you ask our pilot?"

Emma steps down, the smile on her face tightening when she sees Lucy.

"Emma," Ben says, “I’m not sure if you’ve ever met our daughter, Lucy? And Lucy, this is Emma Whitmore. None of us would be here without her.”

————

"The trick is not to change things too much," her father tells her. "That can have, well, _unintended_ consequences. Just a nudge here and there is enough."

Lucy nods. She gets it, really, she does, there are rules and this is dangerous, but she's looking at an actual _time machine_ , time travel is _real_ and if she told Ethan about this it would blow his mind.

(She won't. Can't. She knows that. But he'd love this almost as much as she does.)

She's pretty sure if the furrows on his brow get any deeper, he's going to change his mind about letting her go along at all, so she pushes forward, towards the Mothership.

"Well, where are we going? When?"

He _hmms_ , but it seems to have done the trick.

"Emma, what's next on our list?"

"The Garfield assassination. But I don't think Lucy's ready for that." Ben nods in agreement.

"Wait, Garfield as in _President_ Garfield?" Lucy frowns, and she can't help but notice the ripple of tension that runs through the three of them. "I mean, that's a hell of a nudge, Dad."

"Well, maybe we're not there yet," he says, and Emma raises an eyebrow. "What about after that?"

"We could try Paris," Emma says, though she's clearly not happy about it. "1911. Shouldn't be dangerous."

It's still, honestly, mind-boggling to her that they're talking about this like it's normal. _Time travel_ , and they discuss it like they're trying to figure out what movie they should see on a Friday night.

"1911? We're going to steal the Mona Lisa?" Lucy asks, and Carol beams. Even Emma looks mildly impressed that she got it, that she passed the test.

"Something like that, Princess."

————

It's a nothing mission, like so many of them recently - whatever changes Rittenhouse is making are small, too small to avert, too small to do much of anything other than exhaust them. The painting was stolen already, but that was supposed to happen, and honestly if Rittenhouse has an endgame here he can't see it.

There was one thing, something Jiya found in the three and a half minutes she had to do research before they had to leave. Art crime 101: with the original missing, a forgery becomes worth more. But he's still not sure why that's important.

(Lucy would know.)

(He doesn't want to think about that.)

Flynn is ready to call it, hop back in the Lifeboat, and hold his breath until they get home. To shrug and say they still don't know what's going on, and maybe do something other than think for a few hours until the Mothership jumps again.

(These little changes are building to a critical mass, he knows. They figured that out a while ago. One day they'll come back and there won't be anything to come back to.)

Until, that is, he turns a corner on a grimy Parisian street in 1911 and sees Lucy.

He ducks to one side, hides most of himself against an alley wall, and she doesn’t see him.

(She does.)

She’s talking to one of the police officers, head tilted to one side, and the dress she's wearing is the same shade of green as the one she wore on the last trip, before. It’s all so familiar and so utterly _wrong_.

He slips back into the crowd and away, and doesn't see her again, that mission.

He doesn't tell the others until they get back. When he does - as much of it as he can bear to pass on, at least - Jiya swears and Wyatt breaks a couple of fingers punching the wall, because seriously, how does this keep happening to him?

Even Connor, who has thus far generally responded to their worse moments with Shakespeare quotes and lectures on quantum mechanics, is horrified on their behalf.

"It's bad enough to take her from you all," he says, tossing Wyatt the first aid kit, "but to use her against you? Well, I suppose we don't expect them to fight fair."

————

It keeps happening. She sees them - always the same three, which is how she figures that unlike Rittenhouse, they don’t _have_ anybody else - everywhere they go, always a few steps behind.

There’s the bar in Warsaw in 1955, when they’re as shocked as her to be occupying the same space, enough that it gives her time to slip out and get away. In 1793, she learns that the woman's name is Jiya, and she's their pilot. Then there’s Galveston, Texas in 1900, a hurricane bearing down and a dozen people who have better destinies to evacuate, her name shouted on the wind after her, and that one feels more deliberate.

Emma is never far away, seems to know instinctively when the three of them are near, so that they never get close to her.

“Who _are_ they, anyway?” Lucy asks, over and over, and she never gets a good answer.

She still hasn’t told anyone about Wyatt and Flynn visiting her, that one time. She thinks her father knows - after the last time, he’d talked about putting someone in her department, and though she’d protested she wouldn’t put it past him to do it anyway. Sometimes he looks at her and she feels like he's waiting for her to confess. Sighs a little and looks away, every time she doesn't.

The first time she saw them in the past, the pieces started to fall into place, but she's still not sure what the picture looks like.

“They’re dangerous,” is what her mother says, though that wasn’t what she was asking. “They’ll try to stop us however they can.”

————

Their next trip is a big win - a rare Rittenhouse misstep. Their sleepers don't do their jobs, it seems, and all their targets are ready for them when they arrive.

Which is to say, once the bullets start to fly, for once they're mostly not aimed at them.

Still, even though being on a team where everyone can more or less hit a target and follow a basic plan is great, there’s still a lot of people with guns between them and the Lifeboat. Not all of whom are aware they’re friendly. Jiya doesn't like modern weapons, isn't used to the weight of them in her hand, and usually prefers something more period-appropriate.

(“They’re boring, and you don’t need any skill,” had been the complaint.)

(“You don’t need skill when you have bullets,” Flynn had replied, and she’d laughed.)

Predictably, though, period weaponry has a tendency to, well, not work.

"This doesn't usually happen," Jiya says, when her gun jams again and a few bullets whizz over the top of their cover.

"This _always_ happens," Wyatt replies, after he returns fire. Honestly, though, this is a win, and he doesn't mind that much. This is one of those rare moments where they almost feel like a team.

"Next time, you bring a real gun," Flynn says, but he's the same, amused more than anything else. "We'll show you what to do. Wyatt, you think you can take the left street?"

"Hell yeah. You want to clear out the right?"

"I do. Take Jiya, I'll meet you at the Lifeboat."

Flynn charges off without waiting for an answer. They've cleared out most of the sleepers, but Emma must be here somewhere, and they won't have another chance like this for a while.

He moves forward, gun raised, dodging an errant shot here and there, and turns the corner.

It's Lucy. Not even that far ahead of him, close enough that he could cover the distance in a few strides if he wanted to. She freezes, her eyes wide with fear, and he hears Emma's voice shout after her from somewhere in the distance.

He lowers the gun, because of course he does, and the look on her face changes. It feels like forever, though it can only be a few seconds, that they stand there and he watches her try to figure him out. She opens her mouth to speak.

Flynn catches the movement at the last second, in one of the windows above them - one of the remaining soldiers, aiming straight for her. He doesn't even hesitate, lifts his gun and shoots before the thought is even fully formed.

That only gives her more questions. Her name is called again, a different voice this time, and he nods, silently. _Go._

She turns and runs.

————

The next time, she’s the one with the gun, and it's pointed straight at his chest.

(It’s Seattle, or thereabouts, 1939, and for some reason Rittenhouse is planning to blow up the factory that built the bombing fleet that helped them win the war. Like most targets of late, it makes no sense and they haven't figured out why. The joys of having no historian.)

Her grip is steady, shoulders down, not a hint of discomfort about her. This isn’t the old Lucy, who had held a gun maybe three times in her entire life - had dangled his from her fingers like it would bite her, the one time he’d offered to show her how to use it.

No, this one knows what she’s doing. The whole line of her body is different - hard to say exactly how, a dozen little changes here and there. She holds herself differently, and it is a different he recognises.

He wonders, bitterly, how old she was when they started to turn her into a weapon. If she even knew it was happening. Maybe still doesn't.

“Stay back,” she says, or he thinks she says - he can barely hear over the roar of blood in his ears.

He doesn’t. He raises his hands, leaves himself wide open, and takes a long, slow step forward. Then another. Careful. Measured. Like approaching a wild animal, lest it startle and break your neck.

“Lucy...”

Her fingers tighten around the trigger.

“I said stay back.”

He could reach her in two more steps, Flynn thinks, and he’s pretty sure if she wanted to shoot him, she’d have done it already, but, well. _Pretty sure_ isn’t a cure for a bullet wound.

"Okay, okay. I'm gonna put my gun away, okay?"

He does, moving slowly as he can, and tucks it back inside his jacket. She watches him do it, and he watches her watch him, and he thinks finally he sees a glimpse of someone he recognises.

"Last time. You let me go. You..." She doesn't finish the sentence,

"I did," he says, as measured as he can manage.

"Why?"

He remembers what Jiya said, the first night after they lost her. _Why can't we just tell her the truth?_

They still haven't come up with a better idea.

“Because we've been here before, Lucy.”

The muzzle of the pistol moves, just a little. Barely noticeable, and just the inch of hesitation he needs.

One step forward.

“A few times, actually. Let's see there was 1937, 1944 - oh, 1954, that was a good one.” He can still see her, can still hear her ask _what if he led you to me?_ “Though, I had the gun then.”

He puts every earnest ounce of himself into the smile he gives her, and it might be enough. There's a thousand things in the look on her face, confusion and anger and maybe a little understanding. Her brow furrows, but her hands stay steady. He takes the second step anyway, eyes closed, ready to put his faith in her again. Also ready to hear the shot, if it comes.

It doesn’t. He opens his eyes, feels the muzzle of the gun butted up against his chest. Her finger is still on the trigger, and the way she’s looking up at him, he’s still not entirely sure she isn’t going to pull it, but neither is she.

“The first time we met,” he says, his voice low and confessional, “or, well, the first time I met you, anyway, you told me we were going to be quite the team one day. I still believe that."

He holds her gaze, trying his best to get her to believe him, and he's not sure he manages. There's doubt in her eyes, to be sure, that and a thousand questions she has no time to ask him. She still hasn't shot him, though, the gun's muzzle rising and falling with his breathing, and that's...something.

"The first time you met me," he continues, softly, so softly, "I told you to ask them why they picked you for this mission. I think it’s time you ask them again.”

There’s a crash and rattle from somewhere behind them, accompanied by the shout of his name. Wyatt. His timing is as impeccable as ever.

"Flynn, c'mon, we gotta get out of here!"

He looks towards the noise, out of instinct rather than anything else, and immediately regrets it. Whatever spell was between them shatters as soon as he looks away.

For a half-second Flynn feels the gun push harder into his chest, and when he turns back, she's already gone.


	4. still a little bit flesh and bone

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's finally here! I'm sorry it took so much longer than I wanted, combination of real-life factors and this chapter being a general pain.
> 
> Today's chapter title is brought to you by Dierks Bentley's _Burning Man_ , which is an excellent Flynn theme song.

Lucy’s breathing has barely stabilised by the time the Mothership lands back home, Flynn’s gaze still hot against her skin. She rushes out before any of them have a chance to talk to her (and oh, they don’t like that), needing to be somewhere, anywhere else. She’s in her car and driving before she realises she doesn’t know where to go.

It could be a trick. Probably is. Something to make her question everything she is. It wouldn’t be hard to pick her out as the least experienced member of the team. The most likely to crumble under pressure.

He hadn’t looked at her as if that was what he was doing, though.

She remembers coming home after the first trip, the buzz of the city ringing in her ears, and going home and not sleeping a wink. And then going to work the next day and having to pretend like history was something solid, something reliable, when she had seen for herself just how fragile it really was.

She isn’t supposed to know, but does, that Rittenhouse keeps a file of all the important moments of their lives, too - times and places to avoid, changes they want to make but can’t because it would mean losing something else. She had caught Emma looking at it before take-off once, and watched her put it away carefully.

She drives home, eventually, can’t think of anywhere better to go. Her phone has been buzzing almost constantly; she answers it eventually and reassures her mother  _no, don’t worry, I’m fine,_ in a voice she almost believes.

————

“I _told_ you she wasn’t ready, Benjamin,” is all Emma says.

————

The alarm doesn’t sound again in the morning, like they expect it to, or any time that day. On the second morning, when it is still silent, they figure that somewhere, something is wrong, and despite the fact that this would normally be a good thing, Flynn’s stomach drops a little more with every hour that passes.

He sleeps - a little, less than he should - out of necessity, but other than that, there's nothing else to do but wait and wonder.

Sometime in the late afternoon, he hears the familiar _pop-pop-pop_ that means Wyatt is out at their homemade range, trying to shoot his feelings into submission.

He's been trying to do research, trying to find anything that looks like a pattern they can work from, and there's nothing. He's been on the same page of the same book for the past half-hour and honestly, if you asked, he wouldn't be able to tell you a thing about it.

Nobody but him seems to have noticed, but one of the books on the shelf is one of Lucy's, and it's like he can _feel_ it sitting there behind him.

He really needs to get out of here.

He heads for the range, for his and Wyatt's semi-frequent ritual of wasting a few bullets and studiously pretending the other person doesn't exist. As he passes, though, he hears swearing coming from the direction of the barn they keep the Lifeboat in. Sure enough, there's Jiya, thumping a socket wrench into the Lifeboat's already-battered hull.

"Does that help?"

"Me, or the ship?" she replies, without even turning. "Cause the answers are different."

"Let's go with the ship."

"Probably not."

"Alright, then, what about you?"

She turns, then, and her eyes are rimmed red.

“Sometimes.”

It's hardly the first time - for her, or any of them - and he gives her a tight smile, figures the best he can do right now is just... _stay_ , let her work it through for herself. It's about as much as he's got.

To that end, he moves towards the Lifeboat and eyes it critically before turning back to her.

"Alright, what can I do?"

Jiya pauses, but she turns back to the ship with him. "Hand me that," she says, pointing, and when he does she smiles.

They stay like that for a while, the quiet occasionally punctuated by Jiya directing Flynn to pass her something or hold something in place while she works on it. He's not about to pretend he has any idea what anything he's holding actually does - Jiya and Connor have tried to explain it on plenty of occasions, sure, but they never get much past _light cones_ and _world lines_ before everybody’s eyes start to glaze over.

He can do this, though. Stand here and hold things and not feel entirely useless for a few minutes.

“When I was in college, my roommate had this car -,” Jiya says, eventually, wistfully, “total piece of crap, you know? Always broke down when she needed it. But she loved it. I never understood why."

"And now, you sympathise?" he says, gesturing at the Lifeboat with the oddly-shaped piece of metal she has him holding.

"Hey, be careful with that, it's worth more than this house. And...maybe." Jiya shrugs. "She's already gone a lot further than she was ever supposed to. And it's not like we get to keep to a regular maintenance schedule. But she hasn't let us down yet."

She looks over at Flynn, who's now holding the thing in his hand like it's a grenade that's about to go off.

"I think I was happier not knowing that," he says, and holds it out to her hoping she'll take it. "Either of those things. How does Connor even get you these things?"

"It goes just there -" she tells him, "I don't know, he says he 'still has threads he can pull on', whatever that means. Gets it dropped somewhere and Denise brings it back here. No, the other way up, see?"

He doesn't, but he'll take her word for it.

"I miss them both," Jiya says, unprompted, as she struggles with a piece of circuitry that has a bullet-sized hole through it. "And it's like I can't figure out which is worse, y'know?"

"Yeah, I know."

"Do you think we'll get them back?"

He doesn't answer.

————

The alarm eventually, finally sounds on the fifth day, right at the point where Flynn is about ready to steal the car again and find out what's going on for himself.

Lucy isn't there, and that might actually be worse than if she was.

At the end, when they get back, there's the cursory debriefing - yes, they stopped Rittenhouse, no, they didn't see Lucy, or even Emma this time, see everybody in a few hours to do it all again - and then they splinter off again.

Flynn is first to the range today, and has already destroyed a few targets by the time Wyatt slides behind him and silently takes up his usual place on the other side of the barn.

Beyond "Do you have a spare magazine?" or "Hey, have you seen the Beretta anywhere?", they have never talked out here, and that's exactly how Flynn likes it.

So of course Wyatt has to go and ruin it.

"Do you think she's alright?"

He growls in reply, and a few more bullets thump into the target on the back wall. Wyatt frowns, lifts his gun, and takes a few shots of his own before he tries again.

"You know, I've served with tons of guys like you." Wyatt gives a short, hollow laugh. "Guys who think they're the only thing holding up the whole world. Sooner or later they all figure out they can't do it alone forever."

Still nothing.

"I know you still think this whole thing is on you, but it's not. And even if it was, we're gonna find whatever happened and we'll fix it."

Another pause, and more stony silence.

"Look, I know losing Lucy also means we lost the only person you ever goddamn _listen_ to..."

Flynn takes a long, shaky breath at that, and, since it seems like Wyatt isn't going anywhere until he does, finally speaks.

"I don't know what you want from me here, Wyatt."

Wyatt shrugs. They do well together, out there, two sets of military instincts combining with a sometimes remarkable efficiency, but otherwise? "You're on my team. So I may not like you, and I know you don't like me, but it's my job to make sure you're..." He pauses, searching for the right word, and ends up settling on "okay."

He's not going near the casual assumption that this is _Wyatt's_ team, like it belongs to him somehow, but Flynn cocks an eyebrow and gestures at Wyatt. "I'm not the one who tried to fight a wall."

There's still a bandage around two of the fingers on Wyatt's left hand, and he glances down at it guiltily.

"Hey, I didn't say I was doing any better than you. I suck. But, y'know, I can admit that."

"You know," Flynn says, as he walks across the room and swaps out his gun for a different one, "if this is supposed to be a pep talk, it's a terrible one."

Wyatt gives him a look like he doesn't know why he's even bothering, and Flynn shrugs back like he doesn't need to.

"It's not...There used to be eight of us, alright? And now there's only five. So sue me, I don't want to lose anybody else. Besides, we're getting Lucy back, and if you've gone all Flynn 1.0 by the time we do she's gonna be really pissed."

That's...a fair point, assuming he actually believed it was going to happen. Still, he grumbles something unintelligible and walks back over to his mark. Before he takes his shot, though, he looks back at Wyatt and gives a curt nod.

"I didn't think anybody saw us," he says, later, between rounds, going all the way back to Wyatt's first question, "but if they found out she had a chance to kill me and she didn't take it, that won't go...well, for her."

Wyatt grimaces. "The people in charge are her _parents_. They wouldn't do anything to her."

"They wouldn't be given the choice. It would just...happen."

Wyatt is uneasily silent for a long time, long enough that Flynn gives a humourless chuckle and sets his gun down on the bench.

"You were the one who wanted me to talk. This is what it's like in my head."

————

There is a silent understanding between Lucy and her parents that she’s not going anywhere near the Mothership for a while. She tries to slide back into her old life, classes and faculty meetings and family dinners, and otherwise acting as if she has never heard the words ‘time travel’.

She’s never been more bored in her life.

Still, her father is one of the most perceptive people she’s ever known, and one night, a couple of weeks after the trip, he turns up unannounced at her door. He’s got a bag from her favourite Chinese place in one hand, and a thick folder in the other.

“You should call your mother more,” he says as she lets him in, “she worries about you.”

They talk idly over dinner, about his patients and her students, and her eyes keep falling on the folder. Lucy gets the distinct impression that whatever it is, he’s not supposed to show it to her - maybe still hasn’t decided if he will.

“We’re so proud of you, Lucy, you know?”

Lucy is pretty sure that sentence has never, in history, been the start of something good.

“I know this is difficult for you sometimes, sweetheart,” he continues, “and I know you have a lot of questions. I want to help you with that. But first, I need you to be honest with me. Can you do that?”

"Dad?" Feigning ignorance has never been a great strategy with him, but sometimes it's the only one available.

"Lucy," he says, and there's a hint of desperation in his voice, something she's never heard before. "I can't protect you if you don't tell me. You understand?"

She does, in the end. Everybody has a boss. Even her father.

So, she tells him. Mostly. There are things she doesn't share - an old reflex, and one he taught her, a long time ago. _Information is power, Lucy. Don't forget that._ She doesn't tell him about the time she ran into Wyatt, and he was so surprised he couldn't even speak, or that whenever Jiya sees her, she gives her the same sad smile. Doesn't tell him that Flynn had practically dared her to shoot him, and she couldn't do it.

He gets the broad strokes, though. The visit at Stanford, seeing Flynn in Paris, then everywhere else. That he'd saved her life, once, and she had no idea why. That Seattle was a mistake, that she got scared and she ran, but before that, he talked like he knew her.

"Do you have any idea why he'd think that, Dad?"

Benjamin's mouth is set in a thin line, his expression growing darker with every word she says.

"Thank you for telling me," her father says carefully, after what seems to be a lot of thought. "Honestly? I have no idea why he would think that. Sometimes things change, but we wouldn't let anything happen to you, you know that."

Lucy watches him carefully as he talks - the same way he’d always taught her to. It’s a version of the truth, she thinks, but nowhere near all of it.

No - she’s going to have to go elsewhere for that.

"Now," he says, bringing her back abruptly, "I promised you some answers too, didn't I?"

He opens the folder and takes out another, smaller one from inside it. There's more in there, she sees, but he shuts it again and pulls it back towards him before she can get a good look.

"This is everything we have on their team. Take it."

She does, tugging the papers out of his hand almost before he's done speaking.

"It's not pretty, Lucy, I'm warning you. But maybe some of the answers you want are in there."

"Thank you, Dad."

He tilts his head at her, and gives her a small, sad smile.

“Our family, Lucy - you, your brother, your mother - it means the world to me. Maybe we haven’t always done everything right, but...”

“It’s okay, Dad,” she says, stopping him mid-sentence. She reaches out and covers his hand with hers. "I've heard everything I need to."

————

This is the fifth jump in a row they haven't seen Lucy, now, and it's starting to feel like they won't again. Jiya hacked into the Stanford database a few days ago and confirmed that yes, Dr Preston-Cahill is showing up for all of her classes, but that's all the information they have, and it's nowhere near enough to satisfy them.

Then, as always seems to happen with her, she appears out of nowhere and stops them in their tracks.

"Lucy?" That's Wyatt, but her eyes are trained squarely on Flynn.

"Can we talk?" she asks, and his heart jumps about a foot in his chest. He nods, wordlessly.

"Not here," she continues, "they're watching me like a hawk. Just getting them to let me come here..."

As if she planned it, someone shouts her name. She keeps her eyes on him.

"Next time? Please?"

She doesn't wait for an answer before she dives away.

————

The next time turns out to be an absolute disaster. They forget, sometimes, that this has been going on for two hundred years now, and that plenty of people across time have opinions about Rittenhouse, thank you very much. Here, in a tiny, backwater corner of the Civil War, it's no different. There's a group of soldiers here who answer to nobody other than Rittenhouse, slipping on different uniforms each day depending on what they need. Unfortunately for everybody, both the Confederates and the Union now know that. This place will barely make the history books, a footnote to the Valley Campaigns - a few escaped spies being hunted down and killed, nobody's finest moment, but not that important.

That's how it's supposed to go, anyway.

"Y'know, I'm really starting to get tired of being shot at," Jiya shouts, over the thunder of bullets. "We didn't even do anything!"

"You get used to it!" Wyatt calls back, and when they get home they really need to have a talk about how much he seems to enjoy shootouts.

(Okay, it's not that he _enjoys_ them. But he's preternaturally good at them, always seems a little too at home ducked behind cover, counting the shots until he can pop up again. It's weird.)

"Can we just get out of here?"

"Not yet!"

That's Flynn, a little further down the barricade. The shots die down for a few seconds, enough for Jiya and Wyatt to move towards him.

"They're gone, Flynn, we'll find her next time," Jiya says, more in hope than expectation. Flynn and Wyatt share a look, and Wyatt nods.

"We take one more look, then we go."

"They're still _shooting_ -"

"You don't have to come, it's okay. I'll stay."

"Of course I'm coming, don't be an idiot."

They move slowly through the streets, dodging occasional pockets of gunfire, until they hear movement up ahead of them.

There's two shots, too close together to be from one of the soldiers' weapons, and a small, shocked cry. Flynn's feet start to move faster, the others following, as a pit quickly forms in his stomach.  
  
The scene that greets them is just as bad as they think. They round the corner and there's Emma, her eyes wide, her dress blood-spattered, and on the ground, unmistakably, Lucy - blood blooming in more than one spot on the front of her dress and her breath coming in shallow, shaky pants.

"It wasn't me," Emma tells them, backing away from them all the time, looking for a place to slip into and away. "It wasn't me."


	5. the thought of you broke me to pieces

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Today's title comes from Lyves' excellent _Rest Your Head_.

The next few hours are honestly mostly a blur. He remembers the sprint back to the Lifeboat, Lucy's blood soaking through his clothes, and the brief, pointless argument on whether they should jump directly to a hospital, when they all knew they couldn't.

He remembers the way all the colour drained out of Wyatt's face as they strapped Lucy into her seat and he came away with fresh blood on the tips of his fingers. That Jiya plugged in the coordinates from home faster than he'd ever seen her do it before. Then the anxious wait at the other end - couldn't have been more than a few minutes, but it seemed like an eternity - and a rush of relief when the standby doctor finally arrived.

Lucy had still been just barely conscious, the bleeding _finally_ seeming to slow down, but he hadn't been sure if that was a good thing, or if she just didn't have that much more left to lose.

(Part of him had remembered his field first aid courses, half a lifetime ago, and known that it was almost certainly not as much blood as it looked like. That didn't help much when he could feel it running through his fingers, though.)

He was fairly certain none of them had drawn breath once, not until the doctor had emerged from the room and nodded.

Whatever had been holding him up until that point - adrenaline, sheer force of will, whatever - had drained out of him almost immediately at that, his whole body sagging and sliding down the wall until he came to rest on the floor. He was vaguely aware of the others leaving, off to do important things like check on the Lifeboat and take the doctor home safely, but he just stayed there, outside the door, unable and unwilling to get himself to move even the few feet down the hall to his bedroom.

That's where he still is, now - what must be at least a couple of hours later, judging by the way the light is changing. He watches it for a while, the sky slowly turning from blue to orange to pink, his exhausted brain not capable of much else.

Wyatt passes him, eventually - he disappears as quickly as he appeared, then returns a few minutes later carrying two thick-bottomed glasses, half full of something amber-coloured.

"Here," he says, passing him one of the glasses before sitting on the other side of the door frame with his own. "I found this in the basement last week - I think it's bourbon, not sure. Whatever - it's strong, and you're in shock. Drink it."

Flynn doesn't need a second invitation. He drains half of it in one go and sets the glass on the floor with more force than is strictly necessary.

Wyatt's right - it's strong, warmth suddenly flooding back into his limbs all at once.

"Thanks," he says, and Wyatt half-shrugs in reply.

They sit quietly for a minute or so, Wyatt taking little sips from his glass every so often, before he speaks again.

“You check on her yet?”

Flynn shakes his head. Even if he wanted to, he hasn't been sure his legs would hold him up if he asked.

“Doctor said she'll be out for a while. No major damage, just a lot of stitches. She'll have quite the headache when she wakes up, even with the transfusion.”

"Could've been worse."

"Thought it was, for a while." There's a weak note to Flynn's voice that he can't hide, and when he glances over to Wyatt he realises they're picturing the same thing: Rufus, the blood pouring from his neck, and the look on his face when he realised he was going to die.

That they didn't have to see that face again today is one small mercy, at least.

"So, how many times have you been shot?" The question comes out of nowhere, but isn't entirely unexpected; Flynn has been thinking about it too - could swear he can feel the worst of his scars prickling a little today, of all days.

"Five, I think," Flynn replies, and hears the intake of breath, even though Wyatt tries to hide it. He pauses, thinking back, counting the scars that litter his body and trying not to relive the ways in which he got them too much. "Wait, six, actually. Not counting this." His hand moves up to his neck, to the little divot there, courtesy of Wyatt Logan, 1937. "You?"

"Hey, if it left a scar, it counts. Three, for me." It's an incredibly odd thing to be jealous of, but there's no doubting that's the edge he hears in Wyatt's voice. "Once on my first tour, once with the Deltas, and once by you. How in the hell do you get shot _seven_ times?"

"I am, apparently, very bad at getting out of the way." Flynn chuckles, without much humour, and takes another mouthful of his drink. "Only two of them were serious. The stabbings were usually worse."

He watches Wyatt try and formulate a reply to that, the corners of his mouth turning into a smile despite himself, and sees the moment he gives up and slumps back against the wall. There's another little silence, and then Wyatt speaks again - quiet this time, serious.

“How could they just leave her there?”

There were at least four Rittenhouse agents, not including Emma - all of whom seemed to have disappeared by the time they got there. Then Emma herself, who ran the second she had the chance. Lucy would have bled out there, on a dusty street a hundred and fifty years from home, and they would have let her. It's not like he didn't know they were capable of that - and much more besides - but still.

Flynn shrugs and finishes his drink, settles back - like Wyatt, the two of them bracketing the doorway like a pair of faithful old dogs - and shuts his eyes.

————

"Oh, Jesus, Flynn, you look like _shit_."

It is, unequivocally, true. There's a set of bloody fingerprints on his white shirt that he's been trying hard not to look at, and the rest of his clothes are just straight-up ruined. No doubt whoever he stole them from would have been horrified.

“Thank you, Jiya.”

“Have you moved at all since we got back?”

Flynn cracks one eye open - it's enough to give her a look - and gestures down at himself.

"You think I'd still be wearing this if I had?"

She frowns back at him, traces of pity gathering around the edges of her expression, then rounds on Wyatt.

"Hey, I just got here," he says, pre-emptively. "Agent Christopher made us re-check the perimeter three times after the doc left."

Jiya frowns at that.

"Three, seriously?"

"Yeah, she's a little jumpy." Wyatt leans forward, and he says the next part quietly, like he's worried someone will hear him. "She thinks Lucy might be a spy."

"That's ridiculous," Jiya says, but Flynn scowls and looks at the floor. "Isn't it?"

"It... might not be," Wyatt says, and it hangs in the air, and Flynn is honestly just glad someone else said it so he's not the one who has to.

It's crossed his mind. More than once. That this person, this impostor wearing Lucy's face, might just have realised she's found a weak spot and pushed on it as hard as she can, to see how far she can get. He had thought - hoped, maybe - that he was just being paranoid, but a jolt of something cold had run down his spine when he realised he wasn't the only one thinking it.

"I can't believe I'm the one saying this, but it's Lucy," Jiya insists, her arms folded defensively across her chest.

"No, it isn't," Flynn says, low and unhappy. "Not really."

"And if you really believed that, Flynn, you wouldn't still be sitting here."

He opens his mouth to reply and finds he doesn't have one.

"Hey, what time is it?" Wyatt asks, moving swiftly past that one.

"Little after nine."

"Jeez, that's all? It feels like this day has been going on forever." Wyatt yawns and blinks, rubbing a hand over his face.

"Yeah, well, go to bed. You're exhausted, Flynn looks like he's haunting the place - sorry, you do," she says, when he makes a little noise of protest, "so go. Now."

They both get up - slowly, testing themselves, but with remarkably little complaint. Wyatt heads off down the stairs, but Flynn just lingers there for a minute.

"Go," Jiya insists, "I'll stay, okay? We've got her covered."

He makes a face, but starts moving.

The water in the shower runs red for far longer than he's comfortable with.

————

He's not there when she wakes up, almost a full day later - it feels like too much, sets him too close to an edge he can't walk back from. He stands outside the room with Wyatt, and they send in Denise, Jiya, and Connor instead. They emerge with strange looks on their faces that they take a minute to shake off.

"Fascinating," Connor murmurs, lost in his own thoughts, and when he starts to wander off Jiya goes with him.

Denise motions at Flynn.

"Jiya went over the basics with her. She still wants to talk to you."

He nods, even as he has absolutely no intention of doing any such thing. His heart is already thumping painfully against his chest at just the thought.

He would have, before. He wanted to. And... can't, now. Not when the last image he has is of her quietly bleeding all over him. Not when he's still not sure if that was intentional or not. Everything feels unsteady, uncertain, like he's never quite sure from one moment to the next what is real and what isn't. There's this odd feeling, like his chest is suddenly too small for his breath, and he can't figure out how to get it to stop.

"Flynn?" Denise asks, and he snaps back. "I was saying - look at this as an opportunity. If she's the person you've all told me about, maybe this is the start of your chance to fix all of this."

"And if she's not?"

"Then we'll deal with that too." Denise sighs. "Look, I didn't want to ask this, but she can't stay in the med room."

It takes him a second, but then he gets it.

The medical room is up at the top of the house, and only has a table and a rickety folding cot that's probably older than he is. Fine, in a pinch, but not somewhere to recuperate. And with the number of stitches currently holding her together, Lucy shouldn't move far.

The only other room on this floor is his bedroom. Because of course it is. That was why he'd picked it in the first place - safely tucked under the eaves, about as far away from anybody else as possible, and only accessible by a steep staircase.

Meant to keep others out. Except one, apparently, in this or any other timeline.

"It's fine," he says, but it comes out a little strangled. "I'll find somewhere else."

"There's a spare room downstairs," Denise offers, but he's already shaking his head before she's finished talking, because even if it was rarely used, it didn't used to be spare, and he's not at all capable of facing that either.

"It's fine," he repeats, and it sounds even less convincing this time.

Which is how he and Wyatt end up helping Lucy move gingerly down the hall and into his bed, whilst resolutely refusing to look at her.

(This is exactly as difficult and ludicrous as it sounds. Wyatt at least says something a few times - seems more like he just can't think of what to say, rather than anything more deliberate - but Flynn keeps his eyes trained on the wall or the floor as much as possible, trying to pretend he doesn't feel her eyes on him the whole way.)

————

"You're an idiot," Jiya hisses at him, at them both really, when they appear downstairs far quicker than they were supposed to.

————

At a guess, Flynn has been standing outside the door to his own bedroom for about five minutes.

Lucy knows this because the floorboards gave a traitorous creak as he approached, and she heard his quiet swear. She's been able to feel him standing there ever since. He does knock, eventually, a couple more minutes later.

"Sorry," he says as he steps in, and it might be unintentional but it escapes neither of their notice that it's the first word he's said to her. "I just wanted to, uh, get some...things."

It's the weakest excuse for a lie she's heard in a while, but he's _here_ , at least - the one person she has so many questions for. He’s the one who started this, and she would yell that at him if she had the energy - stood there while she had a gun against at his chest and looked at her like he could never be afraid of her, and it’s surely not her fault that she needs to know what she ever did to make someone look at her like that.

He's not looking at her like that now, though. Still tries not to look at her at all, if he can get away with it. The man in front of her now looks entirely different to that one, and she gets the feeling that neither of them are the full story.

She watches him shuffle past her, collecting what appears to be a completely random selection of items from various places around the room and shoving them into a bag. He turns to leave as soon as he can, and his hand is on the door handle before she thinks to try and stop him.

"Wait," she says, almost too late, but he stops dead. “You could stay, for a minute, if you want to.”

“I don’t.” He turns and slides down the wall anyway, coming to rest on the floor with his elbows on his knees, and it's a start.

“Thank you. For saving me.”

Flynn dips his head in acknowledgement, swallows hard.

"How are you feeling?"

Well, that's a question. Judging by the painful tugging sensations she feels any time she tries to move, she estimates there's probably roughly a million stitches holding her together at this point. She gets a sharp pain in her chest if she takes more than a shallow breath, which is super fun, and every time the painkillers start to wear off it feels like she's being set on fire from the inside. And that's just the physical stuff.

"Been better. This is..."

She trails off, because she has no idea what the rest of that sentence was supposed to be. Jiya gave her some broad brush-strokes, as much as she could - that they were a team - a family, even - and they came back one day and she wasn't there and they've been trying to figure out how to fix it ever since.

 _You should ask Flynn the rest_ was what she said. _He and Wyatt know a lot more than I do._

"A mess," Flynn supplies. It’s hard to disagree.

“Can I ask you something?”

He shrugs, gestures at her to go ahead.

“How did you break out of prison?”

“That’s what you want to ask me?” The look of his face is mildly confused, but there's amusement there too, and that helps. It was the most neutral question she could think of to start with.

“It’s a start." She shrugs. "I wanted to know about you - about all of you - and it's pretty much the only thing in the file they gave me that they could never figure out.”

“I don't know how it happened here," he says. There's a hint of something in his voice she thinks might be pride - at stumping them for once, maybe? "Maybe they did it the same way. The time I remember, you broke me out."

“I did?”

“You did. Hid everything I needed in the wall eighty years before I even got there.”

"Just exactly how close were we, where you're from?"

Any lightness drops right out of the room then, and she winces slightly at her own question. Didn't mean for it to come out like that, or then, but there it is anyway. May as well go with it. She waits, and he sighs.

"It was...complicated."

"That's not an answer."

"I know. I'll tell you it all, I promise. Just not tonight."

“Tell me something, then. Just one thing. Please?”

She's pushing, harder than she meant to, but who knows how long she'll be here, how many chances she'll get to ask. It seems to be working, too, even if just out of sheer frustration on his part, because for once he looks right at her.

“You used to sleep on the other side."

(He could explain it all, he thinks, start in a dive bar in São Paulo and end here, in this room, in that bed - and he knows that's what she wants him to do, but he physically can't, not yet, his throat tightening just at the thought.)

"Oh," is what she says, almost involuntarily. "I...didn't know it was like that."

"It wasn't, exactly. And it doesn't matter now."

If possible, all Lucy is feeling now is even more confused. There's so much to unpack here, a whole other life she's supposed to have lived - her real life, though that's certainly a distinction without a meaning right now. Every time she learns something about it she can't help but compare it to the one she does remember, and some of the pieces seem familiar and the others seem completely alien, and she's no closer to figuring out what's true and what isn't.

"It doesn't?"

"You're with _them_ ," he says, and there's a dark look in his eyes that's getting worse all the time. "Which means you're nothing like her."

Ah. There it is. It hurts more than it maybe should, but there's nothing she can do about that. He trusted her once, enough to stand there and try and tell her the truth, enough to say yes when she found him again. He doesn't now.

"I trusted her," he says, and she's honestly not sure if he's just continuing on or if she was saying all that out loud. "I let that make me trust you too." He doesn't say _I shouldn't have_ , but he doesn't have to.

"Flynn..." she says, and he flinches.

"You should get some rest,” he says, standing, and she wants to fight him on it but she can feel the exhaustion tugging at her shoulders and the lines of her stitches.

"Wait..." she starts to protest, too late.

"I'll come back tomorrow," he says, but from the look on his face even he doesn't believe that right now. "Goodnight, Lucy."

————

Flynn shuts the door behind him and stops in the middle of the hallway, his breathing suddenly coming in short, panicky little bursts. It takes a minute to recompose himself - a few minutes in there and it feels like he's run a marathon, or possibly scaled a small mountain - but he does, sighing heavily and rubbing a hand over his face.

It wasn't supposed to go like this.

He heads downstairs, to the room that used to be hers - though it looks like it's never been touched now, because it hasn't - which feels like a sanctuary all of a sudden.

He doesn't sleep well, and he's not the only one.


	6. leave our memories behind

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title from _Strangers_ by The Shires.
> 
> We're (semi-) officially halfway through this journey into me inflicting entirely uncalled-for emotional pain on these guys, and I hope you're enjoying it (or crying, that works too). 
> 
> Comments make my day - leave one if you feel like it!

The next day arrives eventually, and that’s about all you can say for it. The air in the house feels thick and heavy, like the moments just before a thunderstorm. When he wakes, Flynn just lies there for a few minutes, until the light starts to change.

It’s almost strange to him now, not to be woken by the sound of the Lifeboat’s alarm going off, and he wonders briefly what must be going on wherever Rittenhouse keeps the Mothership. It’s been almost forty-eight hours now, and it’s not like they don’t know who has her. This safehouse is well-hidden - in exactly the kind of precise, not-so-hidden-as-to-be-obvious way that's required - but still. They must be looking.

Unless they’re not.

It all keeps churning over and over in his head, branching off into different possibilities, and it never seems to get any clearer.

It’s never been easy, this fight, but at least it used to be simple. There was a clear goal and a clear enemy, and all he had to do was point himself in the right direction and keep fighting until something stopped him. Didn't have to worry about anything else. Now, everything is messy and uncertain, he's never quite sure whether his next step will be on to solid ground, and it feels like every move they make takes them a little further away from where they want to be.

In his weaker moments, he wonders what his life might look like now if he'd just ignored his gut that night and never passed on the evidence that started all this. If none of this had ever happened, and all he ever had to worry about when he came home at the end of the day was whether Iris wanted to learn the piano or the violin. What little joke Lorena had planned for him that night.

Maybe that would have been okay. Maybe some other group of suckers would have landed the task of saving the world. Maybe they'd have done a better job of it than he did.

He never would have met Lucy, though, and as it always does when he gets to this part, his stomach drops at the thought. Maybe he would have anyway. Sometimes, it felt like it was inevitable, like every road he'd ever been down led him towards her; sometimes it felt like a fluke, an accidental collision of the universe.

It's not productive, for sure. And today, as a new and fun addition to his morning, his thoughts get to drift over to the third version of Lucy Preston he's known.

Trying to talk to her went almost exactly as terribly as he thought it would. There were things he's wanted to say, answers he'd wanted to give and to get, but something in him had frozen when he got there. And while he would love to believe that the Lucy upstairs shares some echoes of the woman he knows, he keeps thinking about Wyatt. If there’s one thing they’ve learnt chasing her across time, it’s that Jessica Logan is Rittenhouse down to her _bones_ , and not even her husband has come close to breaking that bond.

There’s the distinct sound of movement from downstairs, which breaks him out of his thoughts. This early, it’s usually Connor, who apparently can’t shake the habits of a CEO and rarely sleeps for more than a few hours at a time. He knows exactly how it will go if he joins him now - Connor will offer him tea, not coffee, insisting that _it's what civilised people drink, Flynn,_ and then sit with him in mostly comfortable silence until the others start to wake. Wyatt, who has an internal rhythm like an atomic clock, will be first, at exactly six-thirty, then Denise, then Jiya last - usually because she was up much later than the rest of them.

It's familiar, at least.

Flynn rises creakily from the bed - some tiny piece of humour left in his brain whispers that it’s no wonder Lucy preferred his bed, because this one is awful - and heads downstairs.

————

Jiya knocks softly at the bedroom door, but when she pushes it open, Lucy is already awake, leaning back and focusing on something outside the window.

"Sorry - it's been six hours," Jiya says, and rattles the little medicine bottles in her hand. "Antibiotics, painkillers, and something I can't pronounce - which is impressive, honestly - but the doctor says you need to take it, so..."

After a long moment, Lucy turns her head and nods, and Jiya moves to sit on the edge of the bed.

"Thank god for stolen surgical supplies," she says, dropping the first set of pills into Lucy's upturned hand. "How're you doing?"

Lucy shrugs and frowns, before swallowing the pills with the offered bottle of water.

"That well, huh? Here, these next." The second set of pills disappear too, same as the first, and when Lucy looks up at Jiya there's something hard and cautious in her eyes. "Your bandages need to be changed too, I'm guessing you'll need help there. We can do that later, though, if you want."

"You don't have to be nice to me, you know."

"I know," she replies, after a pause. "But the way I see it, none of this is your fault. You didn't ask for any of it."

Maybe she should be more cautious than this. But even with Jessica, once she passed the initial white-hot shock of her betrayal, it was hard to blame her entirely - in lots of ways, she was as much a victim of Rittenhouse as any of them.

Jiya holds out the last set of pills and Lucy takes them cautiously.

"Thank you," she says, and Jiya smiles.

"Flynn and Wyatt have never really got it, since they go on almost every mission, but we used to sit here while you were all gone and wonder what was going to change this time. And sometimes it was only little things, but there was always something, y'know? They know what it's like to come back to changes, but they have _no idea_ what it's like to be the thing that changed."

Lucy looks up at her, and that's better, something like understanding in her eyes, something Jiya can work with.

"I keep thinking that any minute now, I'm going to wake up and none of this will have been real."

"Yeah, I'll let you know when that goes away. Sometimes Rufus would come back and he'd say something, or I would, and it was like we were completely different people, just for a second." She blinks away a tear, lifts her shoulders. "Time travel."

"Maybe that's right," Lucy says quietly, and her eyes slide back to the window. "Since the version of me you all knew was apparently a much better person than I am."

The sigh that escapes Jiya's lips then can probably be heard several towns over, honestly. Flynn is her friend now, sure, but damn if he doesn't have a talent for destruction like she's never seen, and that sentence has his fingerprints all over it. Connor had once compared having him on the team to having their own pet meteor, and she can see his point.

"Oh, I'm gonna kill him." Another sigh, as she tries to figure out exactly how to get around that one. "He's wrong, okay? He has this excellent impression of a human wrecking ball he brings out when he's scared, and he still shouldn't have said that."

Lucy opens her mouth to reply, but before she can, the alarm sounds. She startles and sucks in a breath through her teeth when Jiya jumps up from the bed, her brain already working before her feet hit the floor.

"What? _Now_? I thought we'd have more time."

It took nearly five days for Rittenhouse to pick themselves back up after the last big win; this time, it's only been half that. It doesn't bode well.

"Does that mean what I think it means?"

Jiya nods, almost at the door. "The Mothership jumped. I'm sorry, I have to go."

————

Everyone arrives in the barn at roughly the same time, with roughly the same puzzled expressions adorning their faces.

"I guess a break was too much to ask for, huh?" Wyatt says, his hair still wet from the shower. "Where are we going?"

"They took the Mothership to April 9th, 1865. It's..."

"The day the Civil War ended," Wyatt supplies. "General Lee's forces try to break through the Union lines, but they're outnumbered five to one and it only takes them a few hours to lose. He surrenders later that day at Appomattox Court House. Fun story, the guy whose house he surrendered in was the same guy who lived on the farm where one of the first battles was fought. That guy must have been so confused."

"That's right," Jiya says, but she can't quite keep a note of mild surprise out of her voice. Not that he's not useful, he is, but she's pretty sure she can count the number of times Wyatt's been the history expert on one hand.

"What? We've been to the Civil War like six times. I read a book."

"A whole one?"

Wyatt glares at Flynn for that, turns and squares his shoulders.

"Yeah, yeah, very funny, I'm a soldier, so what, I don't read?"

"No, soldiers can read. You, on the other hand..." Flynn replies lazily, and it's not helpful, this, but it does feel good. "I suppose I should congratulate you on finally pulling your weight for once."

" _My_ weight? I'm not the one who..."

"Guys!" Jiya interrupts them. "I'll get you a ruler for your dick-measuring contest when we get back. For now, y'know, Rittenhouse?"

Suitably chastised, Flynn yanks a jacket that's at least reasonably period-appropriate from their ever-growing pile, mutters something that might pass for an apology, and strides off towards the Lifeboat.

Denise and Connor share a sideways look, and Jiya sighs as she walks towards the ship. This should go well.

————

"I'm just saying, Flynn, would it kill you to not be so, y'know, you?"

"We don't know that it wouldn't."

"She thinks we all hate her. Lucy thinks we hate her. Do you have any idea how ridiculous that sounds?"

"You think I like this? That I don't want to...It's _Rittenhouse_ , Jiya. I can't just forget that."

"I'm not saying forget it. I'm saying, be the person she would _want_ you to be - all of us - and try to find a way to forgive it. Cause I don't think we make it through this without her."

The Lifeboat thuds to a halt, and Jiya throws a pointed look in his direction before she gets out.

————

It doesn't take them long to find what they're looking for; Emma is waiting for them not far from where General Lee is about to surrender. Their guns come up and she rolls her eyes.

"You're really never going to learn, are you? Come on, he wants to see you."

She starts walking, actually turns her back on them, and the urge to pull the trigger is almost overwhelming, even if Flynn knows that some hidden gun somewhere would shoot all three of them the second after.

"Come _on_ ," Emma repeats, when they don't move. "Don't make me do this the other way."

He looks from Jiya to Wyatt and back again, sees the same thoughts run through both of their heads. As one, they follow her.

She brings them to a house a little further down the road. There are no soldiers around, not one anywhere, although there are voices from somewhere nearby and the smell of gunpowder is still thick in the air. Not for the first time, they realise just how deep the Rittenhouse tendrils reach.

"In," Emma says, gesturing, "and don't think about trying anything."

Inside, in the living room - along with ever-more Rittenhouse agents - is a man in a high-backed armchair by the fire. Apparently, Rittenhouse still likes to embrace the tired super-villain tropes. All he needs is a white cat.

"Good. You're here," he says, standing and smiling like he hasn't wanted to have them all killed for just as long as they've wanted to return the favour. "We have a lot to talk about. Emma?"

"We're clear." Emma is behind them, he's in front, and they're idiots, because they're trapped now, cornered before slaughter like animals, and Flynn's hackles raise a little more.

"Benjamin Cahill," the man says. He sticks his hand out and Flynn glares at it before he takes it back with a curl of his fingers. "Suit yourself."

"You're Lucy's father," Wyatt says, and he nods.

"Good. You've been paying attention, Wyatt." It's just his name, and his tone is innocuous enough, but Wyatt shivers. "And how is my daughter?"

There's something there - an edge, a catch in his voice that Flynn almost misses.

"Safe," Wyatt says, and Flynn watches. "Far away from you."

It's almost not there - Benjamin Cahill has been doing this a long time, and he wouldn't be if he wasn't good at it - but Flynn is looking for it, and this is what he used to do, once upon a time. It's relief, loosening the lines of his shoulders for just the briefest moment before they tighten again.

"You didn't know, did you? If she survived."

He's hit the mark, and he knows it before he sees the nod. It feels like a weight lifting. Not all of it, and not all at once, but enough. _It wasn't on purpose_ , and that thought is worth more than nothing.

"Why else would I bring you here? This day, of all days?"

"To ruin it?" Jiya suggests. "Same as usual?"

Benjamin gives a short laugh.

"That very much depends on where you're standing, Ms Marri. But no. I thought it was the best place for a peace conference."

"If you think we would _ever_..." Flynn hisses, and receives a dismissive gesture in return.

"Yes, I know, you would never debase yourselves, you'd rather die, et cetera. Let's move past that part and talk like adults, yes?"

Flynn still has his gun in his hand, and he looks down at it. It would take maybe three seconds to shoot him in the head. It might even be worth it.

"I wouldn't, Garcia," Cahill says, and his head snaps up.

He keeps using their names, so casually, so entitled, his voice always measured. The intent is clear. _I know who you are. I know how to hurt you. And I will._

"Get to the point, then," Wyatt growls. He keeps checking every little movement he sees, looking around, searching.

"She isn't here, Logan," Emma says when she catches him doing it again. "Eyes forward."

Benjamin moves towards the fire, sighs, and looks up again.

"What happened to Lucy wasn't an accident," he says, and it looks like it's something physically painful for him to admit. There's another possibility gone, too, and a little more of that weight, that pressure, slipping off Flynn's shoulders. "The agent we brought back confessed that he had been given instructions to kill her. Obviously, I intend to find out who gave the order."

"Why not just ask the guy?" Wyatt asks, then makes a face as he realises he almost certainly doesn't want to know.

"That's no longer possible," Cahill replies matter-of-factly, with a small shrug.

"I'm sure the three of you think of me as some kind of monster, but I'd do anything to keep her safe." He looks Flynn straight in the eyes, and adds, "You're a father. You understand."

That's it, that's exactly as much as Flynn can possibly take, and he lunges forward with a strangled cry. There are at least three guns pointed at him before his foot even hits the floor, and he doesn't _care_ , it's his little girl and how fucking _dare_ he even so much as _think_ about her, but - with herculean effort - he stops himself before they shoot him.

Benjamin continues, almost completely unruffled - a short, pitying glance in Flynn's direction about the only acknowledgement he gives. This is his show, and nothing happens that he hasn't planned.

"Emma's informed me of your...history. I may not like it, but my daughter is safe with the three of you. I'd like you to keep Lucy with you, until I can be sure I've taken care of any... rogue elements. Then she can come home."

They haven't talked about it, haven't had the time, but handing Lucy back to Rittenhouse, ever, is certainly not anything they're planning to do. Cahill must realise that, because he keeps talking.

"There would be a trade, of course. As a token of our gratitude."

"You don't have anything we want. And if you did, we wouldn't take it." Wyatt's tone is firm and final, but the older man just smiles.

"Oh, really?" Cahill points at Flynn. "The names of the men who killed his family." Nods at Wyatt himself. "Your wife and child, free and clear of any obligation to us." Then Jiya. "We've just finished training a new pilot. Perhaps I'll send them to retrieve Rufus Carlin."

"I think I have plenty that you want. Today, I'm offering you one. Let's save your friend, shall we? A teammate for a teammate. It seems like a fair trade."

That's what he says, but what they hear is _we have a hostage_ , and that's exactly what was intended.

With that, and without so much as another word, he makes a small motion and everybody starts moving. In seconds, the room is almost empty, just a couple of agents with their guns up to keep them there while the others make their getaway. Then they, too, retreat.

Flynn sprints after them, and he gets off a few shots (he thinks he hits the mark with one, but isn't sure), but they've planned this out, and they're gone before he can see where to follow.

————

When the Lifeboat lands, they sit there for a long minute, still strapped into the chairs, totally dazed.

“Did that really happen?” Wyatt asks, and nobody answers.

Flynn is the first to move, his hands finding the sides of the Lifeboat for support. There’s that usual shaky, seasick feeling - only this time he doesn’t think it’s entirely due to the rigours of time-travel. What he wouldn’t give for a little solid ground.

It’s still summer, just about, and normally the blast of hot air that always hits when the door opens is what convinces him they’ve made it home again, but today it just makes him feel nauseous. He stumbles down the stairs, Jiya and Wyatt a few steps behind, and straight past Denise and Connor’s worried faces. The air outside the barn is just as hot and only marginally less stuffy, and before he can help himself he doubles over and vomits into the grass.

He gives himself a moment, then another, heart pounding so hard he can hear it, then stands, wipes his mouth with the back of his hand, and heads back into the barn.

There’s a lot to discuss. Rittenhouse has a new pilot, which is game-changing in lots of ways, but somehow that's the least of their concerns.

They're being offered Rufus back. Connor reluctantly confirms that yes, Rittenhouse's solution is dangerous, but it'll work. That as hard as he's trying, they have no chance of getting the Lifeboat ready first. Jiya is still no closer to figuring out exactly how and where the timeline changed - there are no extra trips, nothing but noise in the data, and she is nowhere.

No, instead, as seems to happen time and again, they can only watch from the sidelines as Rittenhouse saunters into history and takes what they want. A new pilot - it's simple, elegant even. While they sit trying to figure out how to break the laws of physics, Rittenhouse just swerves around them.

"We have to save him," Jiya insists, and it's not like anybody disagrees, it just makes them feel uneasy somehow.

The conversation gets increasingly circular from there.

They _have_ to save Rufus, but that means doing what Rittenhouse wants.

They can't - _won't -_  hand Lucy over, but then that damns Rufus all over again.

Lucy isn't a spy, at least not intentionally, but she's still in deep with Rittenhouse in more ways than one.

Except they just tried to kill her.

Back to step one, and repeat.

They do a couple more loops of that, until he can't stand it any more, and strides out with them calling his name after him.

He's already on the stairs to the top floor before he even registers where he's going.

————

It feels easier this time to approach the room, at least until he gets to the last few steps and his shoes start to feel like they’re made of lead. He hasn’t done any of this right so far, jumped the wrong way each and every time he could, and well - Flynn is not oblivious to his own shortcomings, and this is one of them.

Give him a gun and an enemy to go after, fine. That, he can do in his sleep - the war came to him when he was a teenager and hasn't left since. Fighting feels as natural as breathing.

This, though? He's spent every day sitting around feeling like he's been peeled open and every nerve ending is exposed - out in the open, unprotected. Give him the firefight, any day.

The door is open, and Lucy doesn't even bother to try to hide the surprise that runs across her face when she sees him. She could send him away - probably should, and he wouldn't blame her one bit.

"I wasn't sure you were coming back," she says. There's a note of wariness there that he knows is his fault, and a little plume of guilt rises in his stomach.

"Neither was I." He motions at the chair by the other side of the bed, and doesn't cross the threshold until she nods. He sinks into the chair slowly, looks straight at her, and asks, “Do you still want to hear the story?”

There's an edge in his voice, just sharp enough to be wary of. If she lets him, he'll tell her it was her father who put it there.

She tilts her head, gives him a look that's so familiar it almost physically hurts, and he thinks she understands, though, that this is his version of an olive branch. She says, "Yes," and he leans forward on his knees.

"I want to start with my daughter. Her name was Iris."

That's exactly what he does. Tells her a story of a little girl, as delicate and beautiful as the flower she was named after. Of her mother, strong and whip-smart and funny, with a voice like a summer evening breeze.

Then he tells her how they died.

It all starts to fall out of him then - his gaze hits the floor again, because it's easier to keep talking if he doesn't look at her, and he's careful not to tell her anything that she doesn't already know, so to speak, but other than that, he doesn't pull his punches. How he ran to Sao Paulo expecting never to leave it, and then she found him. He tells her of a small leather book with her initials pressed into the corner, and how he read it every day for two years until he knew every page by heart - and still kept reading.

He tells her about the woman he met under the shadow of the burning _Hindenburg_ , how she looked at him _the same way you do_ , he says. How he separated her out into two different people after that (he doesn't react to the little noise she makes, there, but it's fair enough). How he let her words fuel him all that time, stoke all his rage and his pain until he could do what needed to be done - and then, at last, she was the one to stop him. _I was so angry_ , he remembers saying, _and I don't think I've ever thanked you for it_.

He's not sure exactly how long he's been talking, but it just keeps coming. How she got him sent to prison and then broke him out, and everything suddenly started to look a lot more like how he'd always imagined. They made a good team - even if Wyatt would have happily shoved him out the Lifeboat door and never looked back.

When Rufus dies, he grinds to a halt.

This part would be easier, he thinks, if he had something concrete to tell her. If they had been something more easy to define than two people clinging to each other in the dark because it was the only safe place they knew.

"We... made things easier for each other," is what he eventually says, and tries to move past it as quickly as possible. He gets up to the day they came back and she was gone, everything that's happened since then, and then today. That some Rittenhouse zealot is attempting a coup, or something as equally stupid, and an attempt on her life was step one.

Lucy drops her eyes to the floor and says, "I know," and it takes Flynn so entirely by surprise that all he does is sputter like a dying candle for a few seconds before she speaks again.

"Thank you for telling me," Lucy says, and when he looks at her he sees her fingers are twisted tightly in the sheets. She lets go for a second, just enough to wipe an errant tear away.

"Lucy, I..." He trails off. Before, this would have all have been so simple. They could hold whole conversations sometimes with barely a word, perfectly synced, but now, all he can hear is the gears grinding and complaining like they've never been used.

"You love her, right?" Lucy says, and it feels like all the air leaves the room at once. "It's okay. You can talk to me like I'm not her. I'm not sure I am."

He swallows hard, and nods wordlessly.

"What do you think happened to her?"

"I try not to."

He knows if he asked Jiya or Connor, they'd have some kind of explanation, and it wouldn't matter what it - at best, it wouldn't make him feel any better and at worst it would confirm every fear he has.

"Do you think my mom and dad knew this happened? All this time?"

"I think if they didn't, we wouldn't be sitting here."

"What the hell do I do now?" Her voice breaks in the middle of the sentence, and his fingers _itch_ with how much he wants to reach out and touch her.

"You can do whatever you want, Lucy. Anything."

She smiles then, which might be the first time he's seen her do that, and he smiles back.

It's a start.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, I did, in fact, give these two the tiniest break from the sea of angst I've been drowning them in. No fear; normal service will soon be resumed.


	7. sometimes i trip over your history

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title from _Dirty Laundry_ by All Time Low.
> 
> Let's spend some time with Lucy, shall we?

It's easy - remarkably so - to learn the rhythm of this house, of these people, Lucy thinks. Once they're all clear on where they stand, it settles down quickly. There's a near-constant roll of people through her door for the first few days, and Lucy finds herself spending a lot of time thinking about the person they knew. They never say it, but it's obvious enough that she was their centre, the gear that kept them all turning, and that is... well, it's a lot.

She likes Jiya, who is the only one who consistently says _you_ instead of _she_ when she talks about the past, who talks to her about living in the 1880s the same way other people talk about the year they spent abroad in college because it's easier that way. Jiya doesn't hold back, doesn't treat her like either of them might break, and Lucy appreciates that.

Connor and Denise are easy, too - they’ve never met her, either, and nobody expects them to act like it. Connor tells her he's sorry, that he never meant for his invention to be used like this, and she still gets a little stuck on the fact that it's really _Connor Mason_ , which makes him laugh and tell her that name doesn't mean what it used to.

Denise is easily the most guarded, and that's fair. (Once, Lucy overhears her saying _I'm not looking for another Jessica Logan situation here, Flynn,_ but she doesn't hear what he says back.) She wants information, Lucy can tell - the way she stands in front of her with a close-lipped smile those first few times - but she hasn’t asked for it outright yet. Lucy isn’t volunteering it, either. Force of habit.

Wyatt is an interesting one. He comes by far less than she would have expected, based on what she's been told, and she’s not sure why until one day he stands in the doorway and apologises to her.

“I wasn’t a good - well, anything," he tells her, “and I guess I don’t know if I’m ever gonna get the chance to say it to her. So I’m saying it to you.”

So there’s that. He asks about Jessica, too, and Lucy has to disappoint him and tell him she's only met his wife a couple of times and doesn't know any more than he does. She does know, though, that with the baby getting closer, Jessica's been mostly taken off the time travel brief, and Wyatt looks marginally happier with that. He's better with her, after that, will sit with her sometimes and tell her the other side of the stories Flynn did if she asks him to.

And then there’s Flynn. Flynn, who openly admits to being in love with at least some version of her, who seems to be unable to be near her and unable to stay away in equal measure. All of them are thoroughly broken excuses for human beings - and it makes her squirm when she thinks about whose fault that is - but he is easily the worst. She has first-hand experience of that - can’t quite forget the look on his face, that first night - but he's been different with her, since that.

Case in point: he turns up one morning, a day or so later - plants himself at the foot of the bed, crosses his arms obstinately, and says,

“Get up.”

She looks at him, and briefly wonders what her parents can have done now, before she realises there’s no edge to his tone. He might even be smiling.

She still raises an eyebrow and looks at him like he’s grown an extra head.

“I was shot, in case you didn’t remember.” Surely two bullets to the abdomen should get her at least a little slack, but apparently not.

“Hard to forget.” He moves a little, towards her side of the bed, and stands there with his hands on his hips. “The faster you move, the faster you heal. Come on, just for a few seconds. I’ll be right here.”

“But it’ll hurt, right?”

“It’ll hurt less after. I promise.”

He holds out one hand, waggles his fingers at her expectantly.

“You’re not leaving until I do it, are you?”

“Probably not.”

The most she’s moved so far is a few deeply embarrassing trips to the bathroom, and even then Jiya had to mostly carry her. She's pretty sure this is bound to go horribly.

She gives him another look, like she's still not entirely convinced he's not just making this all up for some reason, and he dips his head a little, as sincere as anything she's seen.

"I was shot about four, five months ago," he says, gesturing to his shoulder. "And she... you... wouldn't let me fall asleep until I did my stretches. Every damn night. Call this me returning the favour."

She sighs, and slowly, carefully, starts to move. It takes a lot more effort than she's expecting just to get her feet on the floor, but the pleased look on his face is almost worth it.

"That's it, good," he murmurs gently, and holds both his hands out, palms up. "Try to stand by yourself, but you can use me to balance if you need to."

The first time she tries, pain rips through her chest, and she gasps so hard it causes a second spasm after the first.

"'It'll hurt less after', my ass," she mutters darkly, when she can, and the look of concern on his face disappears, replaced by an amusement that's just mildly infuriating.

"Oh, it will. We're just not at after yet."

It's at this point she decides to stand up just to spite him, and only a little later that she figures that was his point. She figures out how to move just the right way that it doesn't aggravate anything too much, and rises to her feet - slow, but nevertheless determined. He's still holding out his hands and she pointedly doesn't take him up on the offer.

"That's it," he says, and the only word for how he sounds is delighted. "You think you can take a step?"

"Don't push it."

"Alright," he says, chuckling and dropping his hands back to his sides. "Next time, though."

He's not wrong, either, not that she's about to tell him: It does hurt a lot less after that.

————

There's a pattern that forms, after that. He turns up at the same time every morning to make her get up and walk around, a little further every day, and she finds herself looking forward to it. They're still figuring each other out, pushing and pulling and finding common ground. It's different for him, she thinks, it must be - he's looking for something he lost, not finding things out from scratch like she is.

She finds herself watching him, almost academically. Almost. She notices little things - like how he has a favourite turtleneck - which is absurd for any number of reasons, not least of which being that there are at least three identical ones in his drawers. When he's thinking, or he's not sure how to respond to something, he twists his wedding ring with his thumb, and he honestly doesn't even seem to notice he's doing it. In the afternoons, he sometimes likes to work at the desk in the room - and, jarringly, he hums Beach Boys songs to himself while he does. When she recognises it, she laughs, and he tells her they were his mother's favourite, and they just stuck.

It's a lot more difficult to see someone as an adversary, like her parents told her he was, when you know what songs their mother used to sing to them.

There's more to it than that, though: If she needs something, he’s there. If she wants to be alone, he goes. If she asks a question, he answers.

She asked, once, if she knew how he felt, if she felt the same, and he shrugged and shook his head and swallowed hard, but she thinks she must have. When he talks about her his entire being changes - softens, lightens, warms - and she can see the person he’d be if none of this was happening. It's probably the single oddest experience she's ever had, listening to him talk about the woman he loves like it's not her, but she likes the way his voice sounds when he does it, anyway.

Maybe it's ridiculous to be thinking about him like this _now_ , when so much more is going on. But, she reasons, this is something she should have had, something that's been taken from her. She needs to figure out if she wants it back.

If she lets her mind wander back to her parents - and it does, frequently, of its own accord - what she gets is a mix of guilt and anger and anxiety. She's not an idiot. She knew there were things they didn't tell her. God help her, she liked it better that way. But she never imagined they could do this. And yet she worries about them, more and more with each day that passes without an alarm going off, and then feels guilty for that, too.

("You don't have to pretend to hate them for me," Flynn tells her, because as she is learning, he has exactly zero middle ground, and if he's not vibrating with anger he's the most understanding person she's ever met. "You never did before, either. I think you wished you could, but you didn't.")

————

Rittenhouse is still the elephant in the room, though. They try not to even mention the word in her presence - and it's like being a teenager again, all secrets and shy whispers and nobody saying what they really meant. She always hated that. Part of her wants them to scream and cry and hate her, thinks that would be the least she deserves - Rufus is dead, and Jessica isn’t, and she doesn’t remember any of it, and it’s all because of the people she calls family. It's not like they're not thinking about it - with Flynn, she can see in the way he holds himself how much anger he's still carrying around - how, even though he lets himself relax around her now, in a way he didn't used to, it never quite goes away.

"You should hate me," she tells him, more than once, tries to get him to let it out. "If I were anyone else you would."

"You're _not_ anyone else," he says, with a sigh, every time.

"It shouldn't matter. I still did it. I'm just as bad as they are."

"Lucy, _please_ ," he says, what must be the fourth or fifth time she tries. "I don't _want_ to hate you."

Oh.

The next words out of her mouth are a gift to him; they're true, sure, but that's not why she says them.

"I tried to leave, you know. A couple of times."

Like so much between them, it's not enough, but it's something.

————

"You just need to decide what you want. You want to stay here? We can work it out. You want to run? I'll help you with that, too. But it's your choice."

"I really don't know. I know that's not what you want to hear. Clearly, I'm not cut out for this. I mean, up until three months ago, I was just a teacher, you know?"

"I don't think you've ever been _just_ anything, Lucy."

————

"Did my father kill your family?" she asks him, once, when she's worked up the courage to. She watches him react like something has physically punched him in the gut.

"He knows who did it," he says, after a long time. "He told me so himself."

She nods, a thick lump forming in her throat, and wishes she hadn't asked.

————

Another time, she's not the one asking, but the one being asked.

"I'm sorry," she says, and he sags visibly. "I know you want me to tell you where they keep it. I just can't."

————

Denise brings stashes of new books with her every time she comes back, and Flynn steals most of them. Hiding out like this has a lot in common with being back in prison - reading is one of a grand total of maybe four things they have to do here - and he hoarded books like gold dust there, too.

“Ah,” he says, one afternoon when he finds her looking through his bookshelf. “So _you’re_ the thief. I should’ve known.”

“You have all the good ones up here anyway,” Lucy says, and she doesn’t even look up from the shelf. “It’s not worth going all the way downstairs.”

She prefers to stay up here anyway; it’s quieter, calmer. It feels less like she’s walking in someone else’s shoes.

“Go ahead. It's good to see you up.”

He stands there and watches her for a beat longer before he comes in, just briefly, and then leaves just as quickly.

————

"What if I didn't want to go back?" she asks, and he freezes.

"What?"

"You're still trying to find a way to undo all of this, right?"

He nods; he's told her as much before. It's been a fruitless search so far, but it's still very much active.

"Well, what if I didn't want that?"  
She's getting better at reading him, the same thing he can do to her that makes her feel like he's looking inside her sometimes. She can tell, from the range of emotions that flit over his face while he says nothing, that he hasn't even considered the possibility.

"I'm not asking you to stop," she adds, even if she's not sure that's true. "I know you wouldn't. But...I have a life, you know? And it's not perfect, but it's mine and it's the only one I know. Even if it's not the one I started with."

Sometimes he looks at her like she's a problem he needs to fix and it makes her want to scream.

“Lucy, I...” he manages, but trails off.

“It’s okay,” she says, though it isn’t. "Forget I said anything."

————

She understands that what they tell her is the truth - at least their version. And she’s been out there, seen what Emma and the others can do, heard how they talk. But it's hard - impossible, sometimes - to reconcile that with the man who told her bedtime stories when she couldn't sleep, or the woman who drowned out the entire crowd cheering at her college graduation.

They were never perfect. Sometimes they wanted so much from her that she thought she'd be crushed under the weight of their expectations. She's never been sure how they would have reacted, what they would have done, if she'd ever followed through on any of her half-attempts to leave. But their love never came with strings attached, not like they think.

(Flynn scoffs when she tells him that, tells her that maybe she just never pulled hard enough, and they both think _you don't know them like I do._ )

————

Half the time, when he looks at her, she knows he’s seeing somebody else. When he remembers himself, something behind his eyes shutters itself away, keeps itself hidden so nobody else can see. So she can’t. That’s usually when he’ll give her one of his tight little smiles, change the subject, and sometimes, if it's particularly bad, make an excuse and leave, for a little while.

He always comes back, though.

The first time he looks at her that way - really sees her, and doesn't turn it off - is something she won't forget in a hurry. She splits open a couple of stitches trying, of all things, to reach a book that's apparently half an inch higher than her body is prepared to go, and within seconds of her yelp of pain, he's at her side.

“You should be more careful,” he says, half-joking, as he fixes the stitches himself. “If you’d tried to pick up Jiya’s _Lord of the Rings_ you might have bled out.”

She doesn’t think he even realises that it’s the closest they've been, the most he’s touched her. He's usually careful to keep distance between them unless he absolutely has to, but here, it’s all business - his hands never hesitate, warm and nimble against her skin.

“You’re good at that.”

“Lot of practice,” he says absently, looping the thread around and muttering an apology when the needle digs in again. “My line of work, it’s a lot easier to get things done if you don’t need to find a doctor every time somebody needs a few stitches. If you ever need it, I can also set a broken bone and say 'no, don't take me to the hospital' in eight different languages."

"What exactly did you _do_ , before this?"

"Classified," he says, with a smirk, still focused on the stitches. "Let's just say this isn't my first safe house."

When they're done, he helps her back across the hallway and into bed, and then disappears for a minute, only to come back and press the exact book she was trying to reach into her hands.

“Rest. Just for an hour or two,” he says, that soft tone in his voice that he gets sometimes, that she always wants to hear more of.

She would fight him on it, tell him she's fine and she doesn’t need his help, but his smile is so warm, and the concern on his face so genuine, that she doesn’t. She takes the book from his hands and brushes her fingers over his - entirely on purpose, testing his boundaries. His hand twitches, but he doesn’t pull it away like she thought he might.

“Rest,” he repeats gently, and that’s when he pulls away, but she's completely certain that even if she shut her eyes she'd still be able to feel the way he's looking at her. “I’ll be back later.”

————

"Can I ask you something?"

"Sure."

"You're not going to like it."

"I won't know until you ask me."

"I want to call my mom."

Lucy is right, he doesn't like that _at all_ , and she's entirely prepared for that to be the end of it. Two days later, though, he brings her down to the kitchen and Jiya is waiting for them. She holds out a phone.

"You can have ten minutes before we won't be able to stop them tracing it," Flynn tells her. "And Jiya has to stay with you. That's the deal."

"Thank you," she says, and just like that, he disappears.

Carol Preston has never sounded more relieved to hear her daughter’s voice in her entire life. Lucy clutches the phone to her ear, and all of the questions and accusations she has fade away, and she finds herself asking if they're okay, if they're safe, what they've told Ethan about where she is. The time flies by, until Jiya disconnects the line, almost apologetically, at precisely nine minutes and fifty-nine seconds.

————

He appears in the doorway one evening on the verge of tears - doesn’t come in, just stands there shifting from foot to foot until she asks him what’s wrong and he won’t tell her.

Instead, she's the one who makes the move - she gets up out of his chair (still a little slowly, but so much better than she was) and walks over until she's standing in front of him, looking up at him

He still doesn’t touch her at all if he can help it, but she knows it’s not because he doesn’t want to. She’s seen it - the way his fingers twitch sometimes when she speaks, or how he occasionally forgets himself and starts to reach for her before he realises and drops his hand back to his side. He's doing the same thing now, holding himself back, and she knows enough about him now to know he'll keep doing it forever if she lets him. So she reaches for him, instead.

Flynn shuts his eyes and lets out a long breath when she finds his hand.

“I’m sorry,” she whispers. It doesn't matter whatever triggered this - it's still true. “I know you miss her.”

She's only been here a few weeks; it's easy to forget it's been months for him since they were this close. He sobs in earnest then, and his grip on her hand tightens. She takes it as an invitation to move closer, and she reaches with her other hand to brush the hair away from his eyes before she wraps her arms around him and he practically collapses into her touch.

Flynn ends up practically bent over double, his tears soaking into her shoulder and his arms tight around her, holding on to her like it's the only thing keeping him upright. It must look ridiculous, the way he contorts himself to fit against her, but it strikes her that he already knows how to, that he's done this before. She runs a hand up and down his back and feels him shiver under her fingers.

“I’ve decided,” she says, when his breathing evens out and he makes absolutely no move to pull away from her. “I want to stay.”


	8. maybe i'm on nobody's side

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I live! I'm back, and I've brought the next chapter with me. Sorry about that delay. This is also the longest chapter by a decent margin, for reasons, so hopefully that helps. 
> 
> Today's chapter title comes from _Nobody's Side_ , from the musical _Chess_. I was listening to Idina Menzel's version, but there are plenty to choose from. I swear, there isn't a single line in that song that isn't relevant to somebody in this chapter. 
> 
> Side-note: We are getting relatively near the climax of this little journey into romance and sadness, and while I know basically where I'm going with it, I'm always curious to know what little threads I may have not tied up yet that people are looking forward to seeing. If you feel like it, leave me a comment with a question you have, or whatever, and I will do my best to answer it, either in a reply or in the story itself.

The Lifeboat alarm goes off for the first time in a month on a Monday afternoon.

It's a sound they'd almost forgotten, and the shiver that runs through the house is palpable.

Flynn’s stomach flips uncomfortably the whole time, as he walks upstairs and stands in the doorway of the bedroom. Lucy is waiting, a concerned look on her face.

"This is it, then?"

"Let's go and find out."

She lets out a sharp breath and nods, and in that instant, Flynn is struck with the overwhelming urge to take her hand. He thinks about it for a long moment, his fingers burning with the urge to reach out.

That night, almost a week ago now, is this crystalline image in his head - every detail perfectly preserved. It wasn't fair to her, and he knew it, but he'd stayed there longer than he should have, just savouring the feel of her, her smell, her hands running over his back. It was probably the most relaxed he'd felt in months.

He hasn't mentioned it since. But now that Lucy wants to stay, that choice is still reverberating around everyone, in different ways and at different frequencies. Nobody is quite sure how that dust is going to settle.

He holds out his hand.

She takes it.

————

“It’s not Rufus,” is the first thing Jiya says when he walks through the door.

“August 14th, 1960,” Connor reads from the screen, “ring any bells for anyone?”

“Nothing,” Flynn replies, and then, for the first time in three and a half months, he turns his head and says, "Lucy, what are you thinking?”

Lucy - with every eye in the place on her - thinks on it a moment, brow furrowing, and shakes her head. “A lot of countries declared independence that month - Chad, from France, and Cyprus from the UK - but none on the 14th. Where are they?”

The shift in the room, the slight collective exhale, is noticeable. There wasn't a right way to respond, and yet somehow Lucy managed to find it. That she didn't know the answer wasn't the point - it was the way she answered, just like she always would, that was important. Flynn's mouth quirks into a little smile, and even Jiya looks pleasantly surprised. Lucy looks back at them both with mild confusion, and waits for someone to answer her, but that never happens.

Instead, Wyatt appears in the barn doorway, his hair still wet from the shower and a frown adorning his face.

“You said the 14th? Are they in Texas? Freestone County?”

Jiya checks the monitor and her eyes go wide. “How did you...”

“That’s the day my mom was born. It’s Jessica, it has to be.”

————

Freestone County, Texas, turns out to be a whole lot of nowhere somewhere on the road between Dallas and Houston. Lots of flat, open country in every direction, farms and little tree-lined country roads and a sky that's an impossible shade of blue - if it weren't for the fact that both the temperature and the humidity are well above 90, it might actually be a nice trip.

The three of them stash the Lifeboat on the outskirts of the town of Fairfield and walk the rest of the way, which turns out to be a terrible idea.

"Had to be August," Jiya grumbles.

"Your mother couldn't have been born in rural, I don't know, Minnesota, Logan?" Flynn adds, tugging at the collar of his shirt, sweat beading on his brow.

"Oh, come on, it's not even that hot! Wasn't your mom from Texas too, Flynn?" Wyatt looks annoyingly unperturbed, even in his usual mid-20th Century _I'm-vaguely-important-let-me-in_ suit and tie.

"Yes, but thankfully she had the good sense to _leave_ before I was born."

Wyatt's frown, which has been a permanent fixture since the barn, only lifts a little when they reach the centre of town - the neatly trimmed lawn with the red brick courthouse smack in the middle, the flags hanging from the poles. "We used to come here when I was a kid, sometimes. Come on, hospital's this way."

————

"So you just sit here and wait for them to come back?"

Connor looks up from his laptop to find Lucy pacing around the barn like a caged tiger.

"Not always," he says, a little defensively. "I wouldn't stand there if I were you, just in case."

"How long does it take?"

There's a thin edge of panic in her voice, and Connor sighs and closes the lid of the laptop.

"You've never been on this side of it before, I take it?"

She shakes her head.

"The longest so far was five days," he says, and Lucy's eyes widen. "Yes, I know. Trust me, the good Agent Christopher was having kittens by the end of it. So was I, come to that. But it's usually much shorter. Well, you know, you've been out there."

 _On the other side goes unsaid_ , but it's there.

"They used to average about a day and a half," Connor continues, "but since...well, since Emma... you know, they've been shorter and more often. They'll probably be back in a few hours. Assuming none of your lot get to them first."

“They’re not...” Lucy starts, and then trails off with a sigh. Are they? Is that what she'll always be now - one foot in each camp, never quite belonging to either?

"Sorry."

"No, it's alright. I..." Lucy turns her head, casting a long look at the space where the Lifeboat would be. "I don't really know what I am any more."

"If I might offer a suggestion?" Connor says, and Lucy gestures yes. "You and I don't know each other particularly well, but it strikes me that everybody here wants to trust you. For, I think, obvious reasons. If you want them to go that last mile, well, you already have the means to do it."

"Rittenhouse."

He nods. "Quite. I'm sure there's a lot you could teach us about how they operate, if you were willing to share it. It would... help."

Lucy considers it for a moment. She doesn't nod, but she doesn't say no either. Wordlessly, her mind still miles away, she sits in the chair next to Connor's, looks out over the barn, and waits.

————

They stake out the room where Wyatt's grandmother is currently in labour - Jiya jokes that they can check off another spot on their 'weirdest things that have ever happened to us' bingo card, and Wyatt chuckles half-heartedly. There's exactly one other person in the waiting area - and even without Wyatt's confirmation, the dark hair and blue eyes are unmistakable.

"That's my grandpa," Wyatt says, with a hint of awe.

Flynn is convinced the whole thing is a trap, as always. To be fair, he stands a good chance of being right.

Wyatt can't seem to sit still - bouncing his knees and tapping his fingers, his head turning to check every angle and exit every few seconds. It's hard to blame him - this one is about as personal as they get, one wrong move and who the hell knows what happens - but he's also definitely going to blow their cover if he keeps it up. There's a nurse who keeps shooting them concerned looks - although some of that is because it's 1960, after all, desegregation is still slow going in these parts, and nobody can _quite_ figure out what to do with Jiya - and it's probably a wonder she hasn't called the cops already.

Flynn growls and gets up to do another check of the perimeter, and Jiya lets him because he's giving off that distinctly Flynn air that he's about to murder somebody out of sheer frustration. Best to point him in a direction and have him do something useful. Then, she drags Wyatt to his feet, and leads him outside too.

"You know, I don't think I've ever heard you mention your mom before," Jiya says, an attempt at calming him a little.

"There... there was an accident. I was eleven." Wyatt stills for a second, staring straight forward. "I, uh... I don't talk about her. The only person I ever talked to about it was..."

"Jessica."

"Yeah."

"No, Wyatt, _Jessica_."

Jiya gestures, and Wyatt turns, and sure enough, there's Jessica - and right behind her is Flynn, his hand stuffed inside his jacket and no doubt curled around the grip of his pistol. Not for Jessica, though - even in her billowy 60s dress, the swell of her belly is obvious, and as has been established, while there are many things he'll do, _that_ is not one of them - but he keeps looking around, waiting for the trap to spring shut.

"Look at what I found," Flynn says, walking the two of them forward, and _surely_ the nurse is calling the police now, because this must rank among the least subtle they've ever been.

“You’re not going to need the gun, Flynn. I told you, I'm alone and I'm not armed.”

“Forgive me if I don’t trust you on it.”

Jessica sighs and rolls her eyes, but she seems to accept that when it comes to trust, she's fresh out of credit here. Instead, she tries a different tack, and meets her husband's eyes. "Wyatt, I didn't come here to do anything, I swear. I came so you'd know it was me. Can we talk?"

Wyatt opens his mouth to reply, but it's Flynn who says, "Whatever you have to say, you say it where we can all hear."

Jessica looks right at Wyatt, but he nods.

"Wyatt..."

"Just do what he says, Jess."

The thing is, it's been so long. The last time they saw her on a mission was almost two months ago, and before that, her sole role in Rittenhouse seemed to be to distract Wyatt at critical moments - and she was very, very good at it. Maybe, for goddamn once where Wyatt is concerned, the lesson has stuck.

"Did you bring Lucy with you? I didn't see her when you came into town."

"Jeez, Jess," Wyatt says, and Flynn makes an _I told you so face_ behind Jessica's back. "No, we didn't."

"Good. That's good. I don't have to lie about that, then."

That line doesn't go unnoticed. Jiya starts listening a little more intently, and Flynn loosens his grip on the pistol - just for a second, just slightly.

"What the hell is going on, Jess, why are we here?"

"Emma sent me - yes, Flynn, that part's true," she adds when he makes a noise, "to get you ready for the exchange. She said to tell you that the first time they jump after 1888, bring Lucy. She wouldn't tell me when or where it's going to be. I'm not going."

"That's it?"

"No. The exchange will be on the second night, at midnight." She gestures back towards Flynn. "She said he'll know where to go. That's it. That's the message."

Jessica doesn't move, though.

"It's a trap, Wyatt. Don't go. As soon as they get Lucy, they're going to take you all out."

Flynn scoffs openly at that - if he hadn't been doing so already - but Wyatt just looks like he might throw up.

"Why would you tell us that?" Jiya asks.

"I'm not going to let them hurt you," Jessica replies, and her eyes never leave Wyatt's.

"Not to break up the love-in," says Flynn, "but I think it's time you took us to the Mothership."

Jessica groans. "Oh, I really wish you hadn't said that, Flynn."

She makes the slightest head movement, and there is the unmistakable pew of a silencer from somewhere behind Wyatt and Jiya. The bullet rips through the sleeve of Flynn's jacket and he yelps, clasping at his arm with his other hand. Jiya pulls out her own gun, whirling around, but there's no-one to be seen.

"Flynn!"

"It's just a graze," he says, grimacing, though the arm of the jacket is rapidly turning red. "Alone and unarmed, huh?"

"In my defense, you never believed that. Can I go now?"

Flynn looks at Wyatt, who looks back at Jessica.

"Let her go, Flynn."

"You have got to be _kidding_..."

"I said let her go."

Flynn grumbles and nods. Jessica moves forward, and Wyatt tenses, but all she does is lean in and kiss him on the cheek.

"Be _careful_ , Wyatt, please. I wasn't lying about the trap. Don't go."

Then, as casually as anything, she walks away.

————

When they get back, Denise is there too. For a second, when the door opens, and it's the three of them - Denise, Lucy, Connor, in that order, as always - it's like nothing's changed.

No such luck.

Flynn catches Lucy's eye for a second as he climbs out - with some difficulty, given his arm is still slowly bleeding through the bandages they stole from the hospital - but there isn't time to say anything before the usual post-mission chaos starts.

"Connor, where's the suture kit?” Wyatt calls from behind him. “Flynn got dinged pretty bad.”

"It's fine."

"Yeah, yeah, Mr. The-stabbings-were-usually-worse," Wyatt snaps, clearly out of patience for the day. Understandable. "Stitches. Now."

"I'm getting rather good at these," Connor says, pulling the kit out from under the console. He gestures at one of the chairs around the nearby table. "Garcia, if you would?"

"Yes, Dr. Mason."

"You know, I do have three PhDs, so you’re not actually wrong. Now, take your shirt off and sit still."

"I usually make people buy me dinner first, but since it's you, Mason..."

"What the hell happened?" Denise asks, in roughly the same tone as Wyatt. "Wyatt? Jiya?"

"I just need to get this telemetry downloaded, be right there."

"Jessica happened," Wyatt says. "She wanted to warn us that Rittenhouse is going to try to kill us."

"Like that's anything new." Jiya emerges from the Lifeboat at last, with a thumb drive in her hand, and carries it over to the console.

"Hey, at least she tried."

"Oh, Wyatt, _do not_ try to defend her right now. As if everything else wasn't enough, she shot Flynn!"

"Grazed," Flynn corrects.

“That’s not important right now, Flynn.”

"Sit _still_."

Somewhere in the middle of all this is Lucy, watching everything, and feeling completely overwhelmed by it all. Coming back from a trip in the Mothership was nothing like this. Everything was always calm, ordered, structured. Even if it went wrong, even if they failed, there was nearly always a clinical air to the re-entry process. That one time, after 1939, when she panicked and ran - that was the exception, not the rule.

"Alright, everyone quiet!" Denise shouts, over the ever-increasing noise of their bickering. "Sit. Down."

They do, and Denise gives a satisfied nod.

"Lucy, this is awkward, but if you wouldn't mind?"

 _We'd like to talk about you and we'd rather you weren't here for it._ Message received.

"Oh, sure. Of course."

"She can stay."

“Flynn...”

“Let her stay.” Wyatt shrugs. “He’ll just tell her everything anyway.”

“Really, it’s fine,” Lucy says, already backing towards the barn door. “I’ll just...”

“You didn’t have to do that,” Flynn says, turning his head to look at the door, but Lucy is already gone.

“I swear, Garcia, unless you want me to stab you with this needle, _sit still_.”

“We can bring Lucy in when I’m sure I can trust her,” Denise says, and Connor makes a little noise. “Not before. Now, start from the beginning. What happened in Texas?”

They go through it - Jessica and her warning, Flynn getting shot, having to let her go. They stuck around a little longer after that, just to make sure nothing happened to Wyatt’s mother, then headed home.

“And I’m still here, so I guess it worked out.”

Denise frowns. “I don't like the sound of this exchange one bit."

“We’re going,” Jiya says, firmly. “We’re not leaving him there with them.”

"Of course we're not. But I don't like Rittenhouse getting to pick the location. You don't have any idea what Jessica meant, Flynn?"

He shakes his head. "Not yet."

"I think we're missing a point here," Wyatt chimes in, crossing his arms. "I want Rufus back as much as the rest of us, but it's not like we can just hand Lucy back to Rittenhouse, for Christ's sake."

It's the same conversation they've had a dozen times, maybe more.

This time, though, Denise rolls her shoulders, exhales heavily, and says, "Alright. Tell me about Lucy. If we're going to figure out a way to keep them both, I need to be sure she's not going to run back to Rittenhouse the first chance she gets."

"She won't." Flynn leans back, makes a noncommittal gesture. "They kept her away from the worst of it. And I think she didn’t want to know if there was more. But now she does, and she doesn't want to go back."

"I know that's what she's saying," Denise says, and while she does sound sympathetic, there's still doubt written across her face, "and I know this is... personal, for the three of you. I just don't want that to cloud your judgment. I'm not talking about sending her away. I just want to make sure."

“They’ve been preparing her for this since she was a child. That doesn’t go away in a few weeks.”

"She's... conflicted." Jiya doesn't look like she's enjoying saying it, but there it is. "I was there when she was talking to her mom, and... that wasn't the same relationship our Lucy had with her. And I've talked to her. And so has Flynn, and so has Wyatt. She hates that they did this to her, but they're still her family. There's a difference between not wanting to go back, and being ready to fight against them."

"So, essentially, you don't know."

"We _know_."

That's about the last useful thing anyone says, and eventually Denise dismisses them. Flynn thanks Connor, in his way, for stitching him up, and then, as they usually do after they get home, everyone splinters off in different directions. Denise just sighs and lets them go.

————

Wyatt is making a decent effort at drinking everything in the cellar when Flynn finds him. He's sitting across the bottom stair, back against the wall, an impressive collection of partly-empty bottles arranged in a line next to him. When he sees Flynn coming, he looks up, and his face is blotchy, his eyes rimmed red from more than just the alcohol. Then, he selects one of the bottles from the middle and holds it out.

Flynn shakes his head, and Wyatt shrugs and takes a gulp of it for himself. He carefully puts the bottle back in its place, and tries to pretend like his hands aren't shaking when he does.

"Jesus, Wyatt."

Wyatt looks a little abashed for a second, but then he sets his shoulders and tips his chin up defiantly.

"I don't give a shit about your judgement, Flynn. I get this. _Today_ , I get this. You can sit down and take a drink with me, or you can fuck off, but I'm staying right here."

He gestures at the step with his other hand, which is when Flynn notes the piece of paper clutched in it. Wyatt follows Flynn's eyes,

"Jessica... she's running. She slipped this into my jacket back in Texas, and that's what it says. It says goodbye." He sighs, heavily, sags a little more against the wall, and takes another drink. "That, and... it's a girl."

They don't talk much, for obvious reasons. They’ll probably never be friends. They’re too different, and too similar, for that. But they’ve been fighting the same enemy over a year now, on the same team for a little less, and he figures they stopped actively wanting the other dead a while ago. Only so many times you can save somebody’s life before you start to care about what they do with it, or something like that.

So Flynn sighs, lowers himself onto the step above Wyatt, and picks up a bottle. Whoever was in residence here before Denise found it for them appears to have had just about as tough a life as they do, because there’s plenty to choose from.

He takes a mouthful of something that has more in common with paint thinner than decent booze, swallows it down anyway, and waits. It doesn't take long - Wyatt is a lot further into the alcohol, and there's only so much a person can hold in before that dam breaks. Not that Flynn is speaking from experience or anything.

"I enlisted four days after I turned eighteen. Three months later, I’m just out of Basic, and 9/11 happens. And we _knew_ , just knew, it was gonna be bad. And Jess was there for all of it - the months away, the secrets, the nightmares. She could've left - probably should've - and she never did. And... fuck, I don't know how any of this works now, but that was _real_. I know... I knew we could never bring her back here. But... it's like even after everything, she's still the only person in the world who knows who I really am."

This time, the silence lasts a long time. Flynn sits quietly, taking the occasional drink, watches as Wyatt scrapes at the label on his bottle with his thumbnail, and keeps waiting.

“I don't know how you do it." Wyatt's voice is quieter now, and when Flynn looks confused, he adds, "Lucy. Look at her and talk to her and not spend every _second_ thinking about what we lost."

"Who says I don't?"

A pause. Wyatt takes another mouthful from his bottle, staring at a spot on the far wall.

"I don't know if that's better."

Honestly, neither does Flynn. If there's a right answer, a right way to do this, he sure as hell hasn't found it. With Denise, and everyone else? He'll defend her as far as it takes, but there's still that last little voice murmuring in his head, that last inch of doubt that he can't seem to cross.

He shrugs, and Wyatt seems to take it as an invitation.

"I told her I loved her, you know," Wyatt adds, leaning his head back against the wall. “After Rufus.”

"Yeah, I know."

He looks surprised for half a second, then shrugs. "Of course you do.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

Wyatt scoffs. It's been months, _months,_ and he hasn't said a word, but fuck it, he's just about drunk enough to not care. “Look, we all knew, okay? So you can cut the shit. Fuck, my room’s all the way downstairs and even I could hear the stairs up to your room creak twice every night. Hell, I tried to talk to Lucy about it once, and she tore me a new one. Guess I probably deserved it.”

A few different emotions flit across Flynn's face, settling for a look of mild surprise, and Wyatt thinks, for the first time in a while, of how satisfying it would be to punch him in the face. He's not going to actually do it, but damn if it wouldn't feel _amazing_. Somehow he is sure, with absolute 100% conviction, that most people who have met Flynn have had the same thought.

It's possible he should stop drinking.

“She never told me about that.”

"Doesn't mean it didn't happen."

Another of those silences.

"I'll be fine," Wyatt insists, out of nowhere, rubbing his eyes on the cuff of his sweater. "I will. I think I'm just realising now that we're never gonna see her again, you know?"

Flynn just takes another drink.

"I keep thinking," Wyatt continues, "that even if Jess was wrong and Rittenhouse do get Rufus, he died in this timeline too. He's not going to remember her either. It's you, me, and Jiya. We're the only ones who're ever going to remember her. It's just so _fucked up_."

————

Jiya has been camped out by the Lifeboat's console since they got back from Texas - just waiting, just hoping, that any minute she's going to see it read 1888 and she'll know, somehow, if it's real.

Flynn stayed with Wyatt a little longer, before encouraging him back up the stairs and into bed, but for whatever reason, he's not tired. So. Perimeter check. That's how he comes across her. 

"Nothing yet?"

She looks up at Flynn and shakes her head.

"And I couldn't convince you to come inside for some food?"

Another shake.

"I don't want to miss it."

"I know, but I don't think it's happening today," he says, softly. "And besides, I distinctly remember you and Mason wiring up enough speakers that I'll probably still be able to hear that damn alarm when I'm dead."

Flynn realises too late what he's said, but Jiya laughs.

"That was Connor's idea. He wanted to be very thorough."

"I still don't think we needed one in the _bathroom_."

They both chuckle, and then sigh, in unison.

"You think Rufus'll like it here?" he asks, after a pause. He feels bad, sometimes - the search for Rufus took a backseat when Lucy happened, and he wouldn't be surprised if Jiya blames them for that.

"He's not great with bugs. Or snakes. Most wildlife, really. We'll see." Jiya smiles faintly.

"Don't tell him about the time we saw the bear, then."

"Oh, definitely not."

"Lucy used to make me check her shoes for scorpions," Flynn says next, the same weak smile on his face.

"You ever find any?"

"None that she knows about." He smiles and it just about reaches his eyes. "She liked the fresh air, though. When we were in the bunker, I used to find her sitting by the air intakes - said it was the closest she could get to being outside. So that was good. And the sunsets. She liked those a lot."

"He'll like that too," Jiya says, the look on her face turning wistful, and her smile strengthens just a little, like she's finally letting herself believe that it might actually be happening, that they might be getting him back soon.

"Good."

"How is she?"

The smile appears on his face uninvited, and he can't seem to get it to leave. "She's good. She's getting better all the time."

He sits, a tad heavily, in the chair next to Jiya, and admits, "It's been easier than I thought it would. It's almost like it's just... her."

Admitting it feels like a betrayal, like he's giving up a piece of himself that already belongs to somebody else. Even now, even to Jiya (who is, at this point in time, his best friend, and who the hell saw that one coming), he has to shove down a little bit of panic that tries to rise when he says it.

"Can I ask something?" he says, and Jiya shrugs. "All this - everything that's happening. Do you ever... see it?"

"You mean like a vision?"

He nods.

"I haven't had once since Rufus."

Flynn frowns.

"I mean, I could have one, if I wanted. I learnt how, before - before everything happened, and I got really good at it in Chinatown. I just... haven't wanted to."

"I didn't realise you could control it, like that."

"I couldn't, always. And I... I don't like seeing a world he's not in. I get enough of that already."

He makes an indeterminate sort of noise and stands, nodding. She looks up at him, head tilted, and the next part of their exchange is entirely silent, just an exchange of looks and slight head movements.

_Ask me, then._

_No. Not if you don't want me to._

_Thank you._

Then, he turns and starts to leave.

"Flynn?" she says, and he stops. "What I _can_ tell you? In any timeline, Lucy Preston is a good person. She just needs to be reminded of that. If this were any of us, she'd pull us out of it, right? So we do the same for her. It's not that hard."

"I know, you're right."

"I'm sorry, it sounded like you just said I was right."

He bobs his head from side to side grudgingly, and Jiya looks triumphant.

"Oh man, what time is it? I feel like I should write it down. 'Garcia Flynn admitted he was wrong, October 3rd, 2018'."

"Very funny."

"No, I'm serious! I need something to refer back to next time you're being an ass."

Flynn makes a show of checking his watch, playing along.

"It's just after eleven, and I'm going back inside," he says. "You promise you'll eat something?"

"Promise."

————

Lucy is sitting at the kitchen table when Flynn comes through the back door, reading a book and acting like she hasn't been waiting to see if he'd show up.

(She doesn't, _couldn't_ know that she used to do this all the time, and that's the reason for the look on his face when he sees her.)

It's a calculated move, she'll admit that much. Part of it is that, as much as it feels like a refuge at times, Flynn's room is starting to trigger her cabin fever. And then there's the other part - the part where he's barely looked at her for a week and they both know why, and then there was this morning, and maybe she feels like forcing the issue. Just a little. One way or another, if any of this is going to work, the people around here need to stop avoiding her.

She looks up from the book, and her eyes immediately go to the new bandage peeking out from under the arm of his t-shirt. That was an interesting moment, the drop in her stomach when he climbed out of the Lifeboat and she noticed the blood. Wasn't quite expecting that.

"How's your arm?"

"Stings a little. Jessica's friend is a good shot." He shrugs. "Nothing I can't handle. What about you?"

She shrugs back. A month in, and finally her wounds are starting not to hurt literally all the time, so that's something. "Getting there."

"Good, good. What're you reading? Doesn't look like one of mine." He moves over to the counter, so his back is to her, and starts fidgeting with the kettle, and she tips up the cover so he can see the title.

" _Stranger in a Strange Land?_ " he reads, glancing over his shoulder, his eyebrows shooting up. "Little bit on the nose, isn't it?"

"Maybe. I'm not so sure." A smile ghosts faintly over her lips, just for a second. "I found it on the shelf in the living room."

"Ah, you've moved on to Rufus' collection, then. You must be _very_ desperate."

"Not a lot else to do. Since I'm not in the loop yet."

"I'm sorry about that."

"Look, I know this is weird for everyone. If I'm not wanted here, it's fine, we can figure something else out."

"You _are_." He doesn't turn, but he grips the edge of the counter like he's trying to stop himself from doing it. "Wanted."

The air in the room changes. That's the only way to describe it. In the otherwise quiet kitchen, it feels like every sound is twice as loud - the scrape of her chair against the floor, the soft thunk of the book closing on the table. The kettle starts to whistle and she watches Flynn's shoulder muscles tense as he hears her stand and move towards him. When she gets close to him, she could swear she can feel the air between them crackling like static.

"Lucy..." he says, almost a growl, and that is as far as she lets him get.

She rises on her tiptoes, reaches up, yanks him down, and kisses him.

Flynn freezes against her for half a moment, long enough for her to wonder if she's horribly misjudged this. And then he relaxes, his mouth opens, and he's kissing her back, ferociously, like a dam burst, like he is drowning and she is the only source of air in the world.

 _Yes, yes,_ she thinks. _There you are._

He tastes like the bottom of a bottle, like months of pent-up longing and loneliness, and his kiss is almost punishing in its intensity. He lifts her effortlessly, turns so she's sitting on the counter and he's standing between her legs, his lips not leaving hers once. She takes note things, like the way he groans when she runs her fingers through his hair, the hot, solid feel of the skin under his shirt, the exact taste of the skin over his thundering pulse.

It lasts forever, and nowhere near long enough.

She can pinpoint the moment he falters. One of his hands is under her shirt, his thumb tracing the curve of her breast, and the other is in her hair and his lips are trailing down her neck, and it's _perfect_ , and then - it might be the way she shifts closer and starts to wrap her legs around his waist, or it might be her fingers playing with his waistband, or it might be something else entirely. But he stutters and stops, then pulls away - looking just this side of wild with his messy hair and blown pupils.

"I... I'm sorry," he says, backing away, his eyes looking anywhere but at her. "I can't. I just... I can't."

With that, he turns and practically sprints from the room.


End file.
